Clockwork Angels
by Virgins-and-Surgeons
Summary: Love is blind, lust is deaf, psychosis is obvious. The slow decay of Michelle King to the villainous Schwarzwald, a jolly jaunt into screaming oblivion. Sometimes, when there's nothing left but insanity, you make friend with the worst sorts of people.
1. Dates

"Michelle…" A bored male voice drawls, the speaker a young man in his early twenties leaning a chin in his hand. He's staring very blankly at a woman on the other side of a restaurant table, a woman now glancing back to him suddenly. She had been staring out the large window they're seated right beside, watching the buses and cars pass by without much interest. She's not paying attention to him, definitely not. It's what, their third date? And she's still bored out of her mind every time she's in his company. And he's bored out of his mind every time he sits down with her, too. Her date has no idea why he's even bothering.

"Sorry, James," She apologizes, now training her eyes on his face and feigning interest. He glances her over again, noting the buttoned up hip-length black coat and the black slacks with vertical pinstripes, the very plain and average face, the mid-back length black hair hanging limply around her like a curtain, the pale complexion, and he really does wonder why he even bothers. It's not like Michelle King is anything special. She's definitely not anything special at all. James Thompson could do much better. He should. There are models he could be chasing down, instead of boring, plain, unassuming women like Michelle. She's bored of him and he's bored of her, but she's still trying to keep it together. Why does he bother again, with the boring woman with the C cup and the thin lips and those vivid green eyes that look creepy as fuck when they're in the right light?

Oh, that's right. Her fucking filthy rich brother is why he even bothers.

"James, what were you saying?" She asks him as the plates are set down in front of them, the plates with _extremely_ small and _extremely_ expensive portions. He brushes short blond hair out of his baby blue eyes, making eye contact with her vivid green pair, and plasters on a fake but convincing smile as he looks up at her. He's a handsome young man, a handsome and _rich_ young man, with a boyish charm that works on damn near any woman he tries it on. It sure worked on Michelle, the little mousy girl across the table.

"It's not important. Anyway, how is your brother doing?" He asks casually, taking a forkful of whatever he's ordered (James didn't really care what he was ordering and doesn't recall, because he wants to get this damn dinner over with) and takes a bite, as she smiles a little frailly.

"Oh, Nathan? He's fine," She states, very obviously not used to eating at a fancy restaurant like this, nervously taking a sip of whatever soup she's ordered. It's so frail and adorable that it's sickening. If she weren't rich then he'd be off banging supermodels or something. He's a rich boy with daddies' money; he could be doing much better than a pitiful little thing like this. She doesn't even dress like she has money. "And…how are you?"

They have absolutely nothing in common.

"Fine," He says, finishing off his expensive plate of whatever, already glancing out the window himself as she starts talking about something or other. He hates having to talk with her like this. If only they could have a long distance relationship and he had to return the letters. But, anything to impress Nathan Anderson, of course. James' father's money is absolutely nothing compared to what Nathan is worth; if he can just get a ring on the bitch's finger, then he gets a taste of the real rich life.

If. Though he's really not worried about the chance of losing her favor; she's very lucky to get someone like him doing anything more for her than spitting on her when he walks by. James doubts that she's going to leave him. She'll definitely get nothing better with how she looks, and she probably knows it too.

"James?" Michelle says his name as softly as always, and he reluctantly looks back at her. "Are we ready to leave, then?" He asks, and she gives a nod. She's bored. She's very bored of him. Great, he's going to have to do something cute again to get her remembering why she's not single. And so he moves around the table quickly and offers her a helping hand up, smiling very casually as he does, and she laughs slightly and pushes him back.

"Oh, you know I hate it when you do that."

"Yes, I do, but I have to be chivalrous at least _some_ of the time, now don't I?"

She doesn't answer him and is already heading for the door, as he pays with a credit card and waits for the waiter to bring it back to him. She's got an alright body, kinda curvy, okay ass, but great hips. She's shy and quiet and is completely stupid when it comes to being affluent and rich, which surprises him; shouldn't that brother of hers that he's trying to charm be teaching her a little about having money and power? She's adopted, by Nathan's late parents, and they're barely ever seen together, but they've got to talk at least a little bit, right?

He barely knows a thing about her. He has no idea what she likes to eat, what her favorite color is, her favorite animal, any of that useless shit. He does know that she likes roses, though, and that's enough. As long as he knows her personality and at least one supporting detail, he can change his personality to be whatever gets her married to him. Then, he'll have a mistress on the side to satisfy himself, and remain very rich and influential. Works out perfectly.

The waiter hands him his card back and he goes out the front door to find her, and he spots her leaning against the wall of the building and waiting. She sees him and he notices her forcing a smile, and it really, really makes him want to hit her right then and there. But he can't do that. Not right now, anyway. He hasn't before and he'll resist that urge for as long as he can, and he's got great endurance for idiocy. It's the rich life in Gotham; everybody hates who they're married to, nobody has any real friends, and the weak get trampled by the strong. Michelle is lucky he got to her first; there's worse out there, really. He's doing her a _favor_.

"So, back to your place?" He asks her, very casually, as they slip into the back of his limousine, and she shakes her head. "No, drop me off at the bus stop."

Rejected. Just like the last two times.

"What, your brother not want you there with him? Is he throwing a party or something? How about my place, then?" James asks, annoyed. He doesn't like her personality, but maybe he'll like her more if he gets to fuck her at least a couple times. Michelle just stares out the window as she answers in the monotone that never ceases to piss James off.

"I don't want to intrude," She states, and he runs a hand up her thigh casually. "Believe me, you won't be," he breathes in her ear, and she flushes slightly but focuses her gaze out the window more pointedly.

"Stop here, driver," She tells the man up front, and he complies. James knows that he's still not getting any tail, and he sighs and drops back against the cushion of his seat, defeated. She swats his hand off her leg and steps out of the car, though as he pulls it back, she catches it and trails her fingers along his, tantalizingly.

"Not now. I'm a little stressed today," She coos, smiling to him softly, before he leans forward for a kiss and she shuts the door. Michelle doesn't watch the limo pull away, though she hears it, and instead walks the block down to a very cheap apartment complex and spends a moment opening the lock on her door, sighing.

"Idiot," She growls, under her breath, while walking in her house and locking the door behind her. He didn't listen to her talking today, because if he had, she damn well would've known. That date was horrible, just like all the others were.

* * *

_"And how are you?" She asks him, watching him staring out at nothing in particular. She's fiddling with her watch, a cheap little thing, and he mutters a 'Fine' and she starts talking again._

_"Oh James, you know that I hate you. I hate you so very much and sometimes," She narrates to herself in a tone of voice perfectly audible to him, "I just want to HURT you somehow, so you can't be so very perfect and so very sure that you're any better than I am..."_

_He doesn't listen. He never does. The restaurant is busy and the noise is so loud that nobody but them can hear what she's saying, and so she just goes on and on, since it's pretty much the only way that she can even stand his presence._

_"That's okay though. I know what you want and I wonder what you'd do if you knew that for all the money that Nathan has, he doesn't give me any of it. I'm not going to inherit any of it either. We barely speak. I live alone in the gutter. Sometimes my power gets shut off and I have to burn trash to keep from freezing."_

_Michelle knows that he didn't hear her. She's muttering about almost freezing to death and he's thinking about being a rich bastard. But that's okay. Because it's the Gotham rich life and a poor woman is getting a taste of it. She stays with him just so she can get free meals from nice restaurants. Nathan pays for her shitty apartment and she's got a very low-paying job in a cheap bookstore to pay for her food. Not to mention her shitty and self-esteem destroying side-job of playing a clown at birthday parties. She has no dreams, no aspirations, and no goals for the future._

_Life has never been better._

_"James?"_

* * *

"Oh, how he annoys me," Michelle sighs, tossing off her cheap (but stylish…sort of) black coat onto the couch, tugging at her black turtleneck to try and get air flowing under it, to cool her off. Wearing all black is uncomfortable, but this outfit is the only one that looks expensive enough to get into the nice restaurants that James takes her to. Now that she's not going anywhere nice for the rest of the night (and she notes that it's getting close to midnight, as her plain wall clock with roman numerals tells her) she goes ahead and pulls off the cheap heels that look expensive enough, abandoning them by the couch, and then walks into the small and relatively dirty bathroom. She wipes off her makeup humming the tune to some song she can't remember where she heard, making sure that there aren't any remnants of it left over when she's done washing her face, before walking lazily towards her couch. She doesn't have a bed because she can't afford one, so she sleeps on her couch. As soon as she gets her paycheck on Friday, she can buy groceries and won't have to eat bologna for a week straight, or go out for any more expensive dinners with James and have to dodge any sexual advances of his.

"You scream like a whore...I hate when he comes onto me," She cuts off her song after the word 'whore', now pulling her black hair from the ponytail it's been in all night, dropping the hair tie near the sink as a second thought before heading back.

Michelle drops onto her couch and pulls the thin sheet over herself, knowing that she has to work tomorrow, and spends the few minutes she lies awake thinking. About everything, about anything that comes to mind. She's slightly unhappy with her life right now, but only slightly. Mainly, that's because she has to leech off of dates for good dinners, like some sort of parasite. But, that's okay. There aren't any shortages of men that want to date her, that want Nathan's money, so as soon as James loses his worth, she'll dump him and grab another one. She's kind of disappointed that it's so easy, but at least she can pull it off.

She's also unbothered that her entire life is a smoke and mirrors act of keeping up appearances. Isn't everybody's nowadays? In any case, the only people that she uses are the ones that _deserve_ it. James isn't a nice man; he's an abuser, and he wants nothing of her and only her money and he'd probably cheat on her as soon as she married him. He'd probably beat her too. So he _deserves_ to be used. She's much more important and useful to the city than he'll ever be.

That's how she sees it, anyway.

Contented for the night, Michelle rolls over and falls asleep, so that she can start her smoke and mirrors act all over again tomorrow morning.


	2. Jobs

She shuffles the books on the small shelf, and then shuffles them again. Alphabetize by title. By author's first name. By author's last name. By the first letter of the main color of the book's face. Then she pulls them all down and mixes them all up into a big jumble, and she starts over again.

Michelle King's job isn't anything to be envious of. It's a small bookstore in the slums, where she spends eight hours a day walking between the shelves, shuffling books, dusting, and dusting some more. Her hair is pulled back in a demure bun, a pair of reading glasses with black, round frames low on the bridge of her nose. Her vivid green eyes reflect the low fluorescent lights of the shop, half-lidded in boredom, and she walks between the shelves looking exactly like a librarian. There are only a couple of kids in the shop right now, in the corner and edging towards the magazine rack, their eyes fixed on a shiny new Playboy. They are thwarted, however, by the bookkeeper's stern gaze, the woman herself being only just tall enough to see over the short shelves.

She chases them out, of course, and moves back to shuffling and reshuffling her books. It's boring. It's another boring persona. There aren't many things to do here. James isn't aware of her actual job and it's better that he doesn't know, because she'll have to get another boyfriend if he dumps her over it. Sure, she's a leech and a bloodsucking parasite, but she's also not bothered by that either. Right now, though, she's not the supposedly rich _adoptive_ sister of the very rich entrepreneur. She's the austere bookkeeper at the store that nobody visits.

Her hours pass in dim silence and dust, her only companions being musty old books that she's reorganized in about a thousand different ways, and she leaves the bookstore and drives quickly to her apartment, already pulling her hair out of the librarian's bun and letting it hang down her back, before walking into the bathroom and straight ironing it out to be long and wispy and so that it would billow out behind her like a wedding trail. She drags out tubes of grease paint from a drawer; white, black, and red, before pulling on her vividly-colored costume (adorned with garish rainbows and other splashes of painful colors) and painting her face stark white, before adding a black four-pointed star over each eye (one point of the star ending right below her hairline, one ending level with her upper lip, and two pointing towards the left and right, respectively) and paints her lips a delicate cherry red. Her stage name is Pagliacci. Not one person has gotten the joke yet. They all sort of just think that she's some sort of mime/clown mutation.

It's depressing.

Finished dressing up, Pagliacci drives off to the birthday party scheduled night and spends three hours tying up balloons into various animal shapes, doing boring card tricks that she knows by heart, dancing like a fool for the little bastards' amusements, and playing fool for all the little children. Nobody smiles or laughs when they hear her stage name. She didn't really expect them to get it, since she _is_ a birthday clown in a poor Gotham neighborhood.

The birthday ends, she heads home, and she uses a dirty old rag to wipe off all her makeup before redoing it again in a high-class, elegant look. She's neither James Livingston's girlfriend Michelle King, the nameless bookkeeper in the old bookstore that nobody visits, nor Pagliacci; she's Michelle Anderson, sister to Nathan Anderson, entrepreneur and inheritor of a booming family business specializing in clothing. She's charming, she's polite, and above all, she shuts up and lets Nathan do all the talking. He's the more eloquent one anyway. She changes into a slinky black dress and heels, pulls her hair into a ponytail, licks her thumb and rubs off a stubborn spot of white near her temple, and waits fifteen minutes. A limousine pulls up in front of her apartment, and she's quick to navigate her way out the door in her tall heels, lock the door behind her, and walk down to the limo and get in. She doesn't need to say anything to the driver; he already knows where she needs to go, because Nathan sent the limo himself.

The ride is about a half hour. Michelle lounges in the back and drinks until she's comfortably numb, and spends the rest of the time practicing her smiles in a hand mirror from the small black purse on her shoulder. She wants one that's not too cheesy, but not too veiled and insidious. She can't be a wallflower, or at least, she can't be _obvious_ about being a wallflower, but she's completely stupid when it comes to the things that Nathan's rich acquaintances talk about. So she needs to pretend to know what they're talking about, which, given clues in expressions and body language, shouldn't be too hard. She just needs to smile or frown at the right times, say 'Oh, I know! Wasn't that horrible?' when she needs to, and laugh when everybody else does, even if she doesn't get the joke.

It's easy.

Michelle arrives at Nathan's penthouse, and steps out of the limo with a slight clicking of her heels on the concrete, the night breeze nipping at her shoulders. She shivers slightly, her slinky dress not warm at all, and is quick to hurry inside. She's automatically let inside, since the doorman knows who she is, and on the elevator ride up to the appropriate floor, she breathes deeply to calm herself and prepare. The elevator comes to a stop at the penthouse floor and she puts on another smile as the doors slide open.

The aroma of food hits her at once, a sweet sort of wave that makes her stomach growl horribly, and Michelle walks out to mingle with the rich folk. They mainly ignore her, actually, which is very good; she only has to let on to Nathan that she's fitting in well enough, and that's it. Speaking of Nathan, she should be finding him soon enough to let him know that she arrived safely. He's not expecting anything else, but it's probably a good idea to let him know she's here anyway. She is stopped by a person or two on the way, people that comment on how nice she looks tonight, people that she doesn't know at all but for all you could tell, they were old friends. She stops at the banquet table and then spots her brother chatting with a group of men, though there aren't women too far away as well.

"Nathan," She calls, walking towards him, clicks ghosting her with every step, though for all the noise in the room, they might as well have been silent. He glances over to her and smiles in a warm and fatherly sort of manner, wearing a very nice (and expensive) suit, short brunette hair pressed out of his relatively young appearing face (he's only in his mid thirties, after all).

"Michelle," He says her name as well, as she moves to stand beside him, and though it doesn't surprise anybody at the party, they don't show any sort of affection towards one another and after the initial notice of one another, completely ignore each other's presence. She stands by his side for a moment, listening to whatever they're talking about (she can't really understand it, but then again, she probably wouldn't be interested if she could) before looking up to Nathan again.

"Nathan, I'm going to go…mingle," She gives the small sign that she's here to keep up appearances and he smiles and nods, though there isn't any warmth in his eyes as he speaks to her. "Good, good; have fun then, Michelle."

It's not that they hate each other. They don't. Nathan just doesn't think that Michelle deserves anything of his parent's fortune since she's not blood related, and already gives her enough to keep her off the streets. Michelle never really cared for the rich life anyway, and so she's fine with her multiple personae that she can switch between on the fly.

She's fine with staying out of his life. He's happy to keep out of hers. But they do need to come together sometimes for appearance's sake.

Michelle spends the next two hours hobnobbing with the rich and influential, eating off of the banquet table when she feels like it, and listening in on all the gossip. Mainly it was just about the normal things in Gotham; politics, Batman, fashion, more politics, someone's tall tale about meeting Batman in person, _who_ happened to be the whore of the week (according to the best gossipers), and chatter about a terrorist of some sort or something. Nobody was really bothered about the terrorist, and so they didn't talk about him much, and Michelle herself was starting to chase down some of the waiters carrying around the wine so the rest of the talk was mostly forgotten.

She doesn't get drunk. That would be idiotic. Instead, she gets _tipsy_. And she waits for the party to wind down. She's exhausted, her feet hurt, she's getting a migraine from the constant buzz of conversation all around her, and her masquerade is starting to slip.

Thankfully, the party ends soon enough. Nathan calls her over again, and tells her that in a few days, there's going to be a big party for the new DA, and he wants her to be there.

"Bring that boyfriend of yours, Michelle," He tells her, a wine glass at his lips, and she nods.

"James, you mean? But you know that we're-"

"What your relationship is, Michelle, doesn't matter. It won't look good if you show up alone, without someone you've been dating for a month or so."

"Three weeks."

"Forgive me," He sounds just a bit annoyed at this moment in time, when nobody is around them, letting that tone slip into his voice before muffling it again behind kindness, "Three weeks. In any case, bring him along. Wring every little last drop out of the boy before you drop him like the others."

She raises an eyebrow, steadying herself against the table at their backs but trying not to look obvious that she's swaying slightly. "You remember why I do it, don't you?" She asks, and Nathan leans against the table gently as well, ignoring the women watching him from across the room.

"Necessity. Excitement. Fun. You're a vampire in any case."

Michelle closes her eyes a moment, before nodding to herself. "Fine, I'll be there if you get us those invitations," She begins to walk towards the door again, knowing that there's going to be another limo outside preparing to take her home again.

"Goodbye, Michelle. I'll be expecting you there," Nathan calls to her, and she waves over her shoulder. She's going to go home, go to bed, and prepare for another couple busy work days, planning ahead to take off the day that she'd be going to this other party. She was so sick of parties.

She walks into the elevator and turns around, a few other people leaving as well, and watches without interest as the doors slide shut in front of her and a man vomits in the corner.


	3. Parties

"Oh dammit, dammit, _dammit!"_

Michelle King rushes around her apartment considerably stretched for time. She neglects to grab a rag or anything to wipe the paint off of her face, opting to use her costume's sleeve instead as she kicks off her shoes and goes hunting for that night's outfit. She had screwed up on her scheduling for this day; no hours at the bookstore, but she had thought she had enough time to do maybe one birthday party earlier on in the day and have enough time to run back and throw on her dress.

Well, it hadn't worked out like that. Her tire had gone flat on the way home, and it had taken a wrecker about two hours to finally get out to her and tow her car back home. He'd been staring at her oddly, since she was in full birthday clown regalia at that point in time, and she'd been rather irked by it while sitting in the passenger's seat of the tow truck and waiting, very impatiently, to get home. Her face paint is blotched and smeared in places where she's set her chin in her hand, bored out of her mind, or rubbed her face on accident, and it smears further against the sleeve of her costume as she wipes and wipes.

"God, I hope James can drive slow or something," She mutters, pulling the garish outfit off and dragging on her black dress, grabbing the heels and walking quickly to the bathroom. She glances into the mirror only briefly and, seeing no major splotches of color, quickly straightens her hair a bit by dragging her fingers through it, sprays a small burst of rose-scented perfume on herself (it's cheap, and its scent is horribly strong and overbearing, but it covers up the smell of sweat and grease paint still sticking to her) and pulls on her heels, already hearing a honk out front. She ignores it for the moment, rushing to finish adjusting her dress and shoes, before it honks again and she nearly howls 'Shut the hell up, I'm coming' in the direction of the door, but restrains herself.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" She instead calls out to the front door, impatiently, scooping her makeup into her small black purse distractedly and running towards the door. She hits her shin on the leg of the couch as she rushes without watching where she's going, and falls against the wall, swearing loudly, before rushing towards the door anyway.

"I'm coming, wait one damn minute!" She spits out at the expensive-looking car of James', turning and locking the door distractedly before running back to the car and dropping into the back seat. She looks back over her shoulder at James, still facing the window, and notes that he looks well-dressed and annoyed.

"What took you so long, Michelle?" He asks, tersely, as she pulls her purse into her lap and huffs under her breath. The car rumbles into life beneath them as she stares out the window, watching the scenery begin to move and change.

"A little rushed is all, James. There's no real hurry," She breathes, not facing him and her head supported by her hand as she stares out the window, and she hears him snort behind her back.

"No real hurry? It's a fundraiser for Harvey Dent! And that's not even counting who's throwing it. _This is kind of **important**_, Michelle." He says the last part in a patronizing, condescending tone, and she begins tapping her nails on the glass in a steady, rhythmic pattern. "What would Nathan say if he knew that you weren't taking things this seriously?"

"He wouldn't care," She replies, tersely, and gets no response. He's apparently ignoring her again, knowing that she was in one of her rare bad moods and that it was easier to just pretend she was mute. They don't look at one another for the rest of the ride, instead focusing on the streets and the lights of Gotham instead.

* * *

The party is as nice as Michelle would've expected. She and James step out of the elevator, standing relatively close to one another but not touching, and instantly, Michelle hears and ignores whispering that starts. She walks off on her own so that she can put distance between James and herself before she slips up and stops acting like the quiet woman he's used to, and he gets suspicious of her, and instead busies herself with a glass of wine. There's still whispering and it seems to be following her for some reason or another, but she's not really paying attention to it and hangs back instead, listening to the buzz about Bruce Wayne's big entrance that she and James missed because they were late.

_Wish I could have been there. Sounds like an interesting sight._

"Michelle," She hears a familiar voice say her name in a strangled hiss, and looks over at Nathan across the room to see his expression equal parts strained smile and mortification. He gestures to his mouth, trailing his finger along his jaw line, and she knows that he's trying to tell her _something_. She can't figure out for the life of her what it is, though. And she notices that he's trying to get her to notice or do something, but without having to actually walk over and tell her what the hell he's motioning about and therefore implicate himself in being aware that she's even at the party.

"What is it? Just, come tell me Nathan!" Michelle hisses, loud enough to be heard over the din of the room but only just barely. She then sees him look at someone else and call them over, and recognizes it as James. Nathan points to her and James looks at her for the first time of the night, and he loses the color in his face as he sees her dumbfounded expression. He's wearing a nice suit for the night, like Nathan is, and is now fiddling furiously with the sleeves before starting to run his finger along his lips, trying to tell her something too. She shrugs to show him that she's got no idea what the hell they're on about, and James begins to walk speedily towards her.

"You're insane!" He hisses to her when he finally reaches her, grabbing her by her upper arm and trying to steer her away from the crowd.

"What are you two even talking about?" Michelle snaps at him quietly, jerking her arm out of his grip and looking him straight in the face. He growls under his breath, putting a hand over his eyes.

"You. Look. Like. A. Freak! Of all the times you picked to do something stupid, it had to be now! Had to be here! How hard is that to understand, Michelle?"

"If you'd just tell me what the hell you're talking about, then maybe I could know why!"

They're arguing in whispers now, though it's easy to tell that they are arguing back towards the back of the room, James trying to keep her out of sight and Michelle demanding to know _why_. And at the loud sound at the front of the room, she and James fall silent, as everyone else does, and turn around to see what it was.

And they both proceed to freeze when Gotham's own resident terror comes into view as a blotch of purple among the somewhat soft tones of the room, greeting everyone as genially as a murderous psychopath firing off a shotgun can. Someone's scream echoes out in the room and breaks the silence for a moment, before it settles again. Both Michelle and James are in the back of the room, obscured slightly by other guests but fully able to see the Joker as he moves among the guests, thugs at his heels (and heavily armed as well), haranguing random people.

"You're kidding me," James whispers next to her, his voice hollow, and Michelle remains silent, glancing across the room to see Nathan as still as a statue, the color in his face fading as well. Even though she's still in this horrible situation, Michelle can feel at least some satisfaction at seeing Nathan as terrified as everyone else is, for once, instead of acting superhumanly calm and controlled. That satisfaction fades quickly, though, and Michelle notices James slowly creeping backwards, moving behind her.

"You asshole, I'm not your human shield!" She hisses, as quietly as possible, but he's already behind her and she isn't going to make herself noticeable by moving too much. They watch the Joker walking through the crowd, smiling, chatting one-sidedly with someone here and there, before starting to seemingly interrogate a woman that Michelle couldn't quite recognize at the moment. Whatever they're talking about she's not listening to, because she's a selfish woman that would more like to argue with James over him using her as a human shield between himself and the psychopath and company currently harassing everyone.

"You're going to get us killed, you dumb slut," James hisses back at her, between his teeth, and she stamps her heel into his foot, feeling him flinch and swear as quietly as possible, his hand on her bare shoulder now tightening its grip painfully. They're definitely not going to stay together after tonight, if they don't end up dead.

More noise, more commotion, and the two of them realize that someone's now fighting in the center of the room, and they almost sigh in relief.

"Oh, Batman's here," James sighs quietly, relieved, calming down a bit and loosening his grip on her shoulder. Michelle jerked her shoulder out of his grip, not wanting him to touch her, and instead watching what was happening. And they've been arguing so long, that they only look back in time to see the Joker blowing out a window, saying something neither of them can quite catch, before tossing the woman out. The thugs are apparently out of commission too, since Michelle can't quite see them around at the moment, though that could be because she's back in the crowd. And then the one person that can go toe-to-toe with the incredibly dangerous killers in the room dives out the window, after her.

"You're…kidding me…" Michelle queries rhetorically, her voice vapid with shock, as the Joker turns and surveys the room, seeing the fact that he is the only one on his side armed in a room full of people that are already starting to grab makeshift weapons and inch towards him. He glances around the room, beginning to walk at a good clip as he does, and James and Michelle freeze when he seems to spot them and, instead of glancing away, keeps staring. Mainly at Michelle. A moment later, he bursts into a peal of rabid laughter, already heading towards them.

"I didn't know I had _fans_," He begins with an unsettling smile, and Michelle, being confused, looks back at James questioningly for a moment, before back to the Joker advancing towards them.

A moment later, James puts his hands flat on her shoulder blades, and shoves her.

Michelle lets out a small gasp of surprise and hurtles forward, staggering as she tries to get her footing again (damn the heels), and lets out a small 'oomph' as she runs right into the Joker's chest. She barely hears James say, "Take her!" from the shock of what's just happened. She tries to push away from him, turning away and run, but a deceptively strong arm hooks around her throat and pins her back against him, a knife against her cheek. Immediately, the people advancing on him freeze now that he has a hostage, and instead watch Michelle turn paler and paler by the second.

"Now, as you can all probably guess, anyone makes any _rash_ movements and she dies," Michelle hears him speak in her ear, the arm around her throat moving to hold her around the waist instead and the knife pressing against her jugular. She glances at Nathan and sees that he's averting his eyes, focusing on the far wall instead, and when she looks for James, he's gone. She then feels him walking backwards with her, towards the door, and he's almost giggling in her ear.

"Wonderful choice of makeup," He states, and Michelle cranes her neck as much as she dares, looking confusedly at him. It's a bad choice, since actually seeing him terrifies her even further, but the question's been plaguing her all night and she's probably going to die pretty soon, so she wants to die knowing what the hell was wrong all night.

"_What_?"

He looks confused for a moment, as if she's crazy for not knowing, before Michelle catches her reflection in the steel elevator walls as they back into it and sees her own face, though blurred, with a large slash of red on it. It's blurry and hard to make out, but her heart sinks into her stomach when she realizes that the red of her Pagliacci getup's face paint is smeared across her mouth. It was probably when she was hurrying before the party, wiping her wrist across her face to get the makeup off quickly; the red slash across her face is almost like the deep red paint Joker's got on his own mouth.

The entire party long, she's been walking around with a Joker smile. No wonder Nathan was mortified.

"Oh _God_," Michelle groans, as the horror of it washes over her a minute and she forgets the**_ somewhat worse_** situation that she's in at the moment. She is reminded, however, when she sees the elevator doors beginning to close and glances up at the watching guests, plaintively, almost begging for someone to come help her. Nobody moves, and the elevator doors slide closed in her paper white, horror-stricken face.

On the ride down the elevator floor is, surprisingly, not coated with her blood. The Joker just sort of keeps her pinned, and waits for the elevator patiently. Michelle's quaking, her mind racing and blank. She's got no idea what to do now, and, honestly, is waiting every moment to have her throat cut. She does, however, risk a quick glance up at the Joker, and he's just staring off at the doors, seemingly not paying attention to her at the moment.

"You feel like a drum," He says suddenly, and Michelle jumps, before trying to calm herself down.

"Kind of…_expected_, no?" Is all she manages, in a hoarse rasp, and the thugs seem to tense up when their boss cracks into another bit of high pitched laughter that echoes off the walls of the elevator painfully loud. The elevator stops and the doors open, before he's dragging her out.

"I suppose you've got a point."

He drags her out of the building and down to a vehicle, the knife pressing harder and harder into her throat as they walk (or in her case, stagger). As they stop in front of the car, he lets go of her and shoves her forward, as she trips and falls to the concrete.

"Kill her," Michelle hears him say dismissively, and the goon in front of her levels a gun at her face at such an angle that she can see down the barrel. In terror, she lashes out like an animal and hooks her foot behind the masked man's, giving a good jerk and watching him fall. Thank God for small mercies, like Nathan paying for self-defense classes so she wouldn't be held ransom or something like that. As the masked man falls, she rises to her feet and starts to run blindly past him, trying to get away. He recovers quickly, grabbing her by the ankle and pulling her down to the ground, grabbing his gun and pressing the muzzle of it against the back of her head, hard.

"Stupid bitch," She hears him mutter, and closes her eyes to wait for him to kill her. A gunshot rings out, but instead of death, she opens her eyes to see gore sprayed across the concrete in her field of vision and feels something heavy slump against her. There's wetness all along her neck and the back of her head, and she rolls over quickly to see a corpse with a hole through its head lying on top of her. She screams bloody murder and shoves it off, seeing but also not really recognizing the blood and gray matter now coating her body. The cold night air bites at her skin as the breeze blows on her wet body, and she shivers for that and another reason.

"You're pretty funny, did you know that?" The Joker states, tossing his shotgun at the masked goon driving, and he starts laughing again at her terrified expression as she looks up at him, blood coating her. Michelle tries to scoot away from him as he walks towards her, grabbing her by the upper arm in a grip so tight that it's sure to leave bruises, dragging her to her feet. She doesn't even try to pull away from him until they walk around to the back of the van, which is when she attempts to wrench free of his grip.

"You aren't making this _easy_," He half-mutters in annoyance as she struggles and the back of the van is opened, and as she thrashes again, he cups the left side of her head in his hand and then slams her skull against the steel wall of the van. Michelle goes completely limp as black spots bloom in her vision, and he pulls her up into the van as someone closes the door behind them. She hears the Joker speak one last time before she passes out on the floor of the van where he tosses her, and there's laughter in his voice as he speaks again and the van starts to move under them.

"You should calm down, you know. Too much stress is bad for the heart."


	4. Rides

For a moment, Michelle's sure that she's fallen asleep in the limo and that the person whose shoe she's staring at from behind her bangs is James', letting her sleep off a hangover from the Wayne fundraiser. Her head feels like it's been put through a dishwasher, and she groans under her breath from how the pain in the side of her head pulses with every heartbeat.

"Someone's awake early. Tough old girl, aren't you?"

Her eyes widen as the faintly amused (and patronizing) voice of a homicidal maniac sounds out somewhere above her, and she tries to slow her breathing and pretend she's still unconscious. There's a moment of silence in the van as nobody speaks, and Michelle begins to think that she's fooled him. Then, the toe of his shoe taps her on the side of her head, a little harder than necessary.

"You know, I can tell you're awake. You're not too good at acting."

Knowing that she's been caught, Michelle sighs in a hissing sort of way and tries to lie back down on the floor of the van to ignore him.

"Oh _fuck_ you," She spits at him under her breath, and not a moment later, she screams when he stamps his foot down on her hand and casually grinds his heel into her fingers.

"Come on now, we don't need to be so _hostile_," He says down to her, dragging out the last word as she presses her forehead against the cool van bottom and grits her teeth. "It's not like you have any real reason to be angry. You're not dead, so far. You've already outlived at least three of my henchmen." There's rustling as Michelle guesses that he's digging through something, and she raises her head to get a good look at him for the first time. The black circles around his eyes make it look like he's only got empty sockets in the low light, except for a faint glint of light off of his eyes. Most noticeable, though, is the ghastly red smile that she's unintentionally mimicking.

She begins to notice that her vision must still be faded and fuzzy, because she can't see very well at all. Then she notices that he's digging through her purse.

"Hey asshole, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Michelle snaps, moving to her knees and standing enough to lean forward and try to snatch the purse out of his hands. She vaguely knows that it's a horrible, horrible idea, but her thoughts are still fuzzy so the realization of exactly how horrible this idea is doesn't strike her at the moment.

"You're pretty rude," She sees a flash of movement and then feels a foot flat against her chest, a moment before he kicks her back hard enough for her to hit the other side of the van and smack her head on the steel wall again, before crumpling to the floor. "Miss Michelle King. For dressing up that pretty face of yours like mine, you don't seem happy to meet the original."

"Didn't mean to…" She murmurs from the other side of the van, sitting up slowly and leaning against the opposite wall of the van. There's a thug up front driving and another sitting in back with them and apparently attempting to ignore things, like the driver is. They both flinch at a burst of raucous laughter from the Joker, the noise bouncing off the walls of the van painfully loud.

"_Didn't mean to_? Did you just not **notice** the big red smear across your face?" He asks through his laughter, and Michelle's too addled to take offense. She doesn't answer and just closes her eyes, feeling sick to her stomach. There's silence and then, more rustling as he continues to dig through her purse.

"Nice taste in greasepaint you've got, though. Expensive stuff. " Michelle raises her head, slowly, and sees that he's now examining the tube of black greasepaint that she must have, in her hurry to get ready earlier, swept into her purse without realizing. She doesn't care, though, because she feels absolutely horrible right now. From her head to her hand to the sick feeling in her stomach, she feels terrible.

_Now would be a good time to pass out again, _She notes, sliding down the wall of the van with half-lidded eyes. That's about when the van comes to a sudden, jerky stop, and Michelle slumps over and whacks her head on the floor again. _A really, really good time._

"I think I have a concussion," She states, loud enough to be heard, and hears movement right in front of her.

"No no, if you had a concussion you'd be asking the same questions over and over again," Joker states as he grabs her by the wrist and drags her to her feet, before closing a gloved hand around the back of her neck and gripping there tightly enough to guide her weak staggering. "'Where am I?', 'what happened?', 'Why is everyone done up like clowns? Are we at the circus?' Stupid things like that."

Michelle winces at the painfully tight grip he has on the back of her neck, but goes along with it anyway because there isn't really any other choice. "You've got experience in this area of expertise?"

"Oh, plenty," She hears him state casually, dragging her along towards an old warehouse-type building. The two goons walked behind them, as they entered the dim, distinctly musty building. The entire place looked dirty, as if someone hadn't been in the place for years before Joker and his men moved in, with rusted pipes in view here and there and dim, flickering lights casting an eerie yellowish fluorescent glow over everyone.

"Welcome to Joker Estates, Michelle. A little old, little bit dirty, but hey; that just adds to the _charm_."

Michelle just staggers along, before she begins to slow down and almost can't continue. He doesn't even slow down, though he lets her neck slip free of his grip and instead coils his fist in her long hair and drags her along.

"I'm not carrying you, so let's march," Joker states, and it's only a moment of the vicious pulling before Michelle's on her feet again, and he grips the back of her neck again for an easier lead. "Good girl."

She wants to say something snappy and witty, but nothing comes to mind and she remains silent as he comes to a room and throws open the door with enough gusto for it to slam against the wall loudly. There's a dirty mattress lying on the opposite floor and a door leading to what could ostensibly be a bathroom, and Michelle only gets a moment to take this in before they're walking over towards the bed.

"Take a load off," He says in her ear about a second before he sweeps the foot she's leaning most of her weight on out from under her, and she drops like a stone to the lumpy, kind of hard mattress, face-first. "Because, hey, this just _could be_ the last room you ever see. Might as well get comfortable."

It takes a moment for him to realize that she's not moving.

"Hey? You know, if you're dead I'm going to be disappointed. We went through all the trouble of getting acquainted and all."

He toes her with his boot and, with no movement, hooks his shoe underneath her stomach and rolls her over onto her back, before putting his foot on her stomach and pressing down hard. Michelle coughs and recoils at the pressure, and opens her eyes enough to see that the Joker's staring at her, apparently displeased at her passing out while he was in the middle of a lecture.

"What do you even _want_ with me?" She manages in a strangled tone, and squints up at him. At the question he smiles, having apparently been waiting and prepared for it.

"There's that question. And here I thought you were just going to roll with it the entire way," He sounds vaguely disappointed, but the tone doesn't really have as much an effect when he's smiling like that. Michelle doesn't smile back, just stares. "It's not really all that complicated. You entertain me, at least for right now. And until you stop being funny, or something…_unfortunate _happens," He says 'something unfortunate' in a way that seems to suggest that this is what he's most expecting to happen, "Then you'll be here as a member of our…ooh, I think we could call it one big _family_."

Her heart is sinking with every word, as he makes accompanying hand motions to give emphasis where it's needed. And since she's not talking, he takes the opportunity to start talking about something else entirely, offhandedly beginning to pace.

"You know, it gets depressing being the only one _smiling _around here. I think a fresh face might brighten up the place a bit. And more manpower is always appreciated; crime _is_ a business, you know, and the turnover rate for henchman is kind of…_high_ around here. Can you handle a gun?" Joker turns toward her at that last sentence, seeming to wait for a response. She opens her mouth to respond "No, why would I you sick freak", but he cuts her off with a clap of his gloved hands. "Never mind, I'm sure we'll find out later." He turns, heading for the open door as a curious masked thug that had been watching dives back out of the line of sight, skittering off. Meanwhile Michelle tries to stand, tries to walk after him and start cussing him out for playing with her life on a stupid whim, but as she puts weight on her leg it collapses beneath her and she falls to her knees and scrapes them on the concrete flooring, her slinky black dress now dirty and ripped here and there.

"That reminds me," The Joker says as an afterthought, already chucking her purse across the room and ignoring the noise of it smacking hard against the wall. "You're probably going to want to take a shower. The blood is a nice aesthetic, but it's good to mix things up a bit. Everybody does blood now and then, anyway. It's tired."

He slams the door behind him and the lock clicks shut, as Michelle stares blankly after him, not quite comprehending.

"Blood?"

She looks down at herself for the first time since her abduction, and turns a shade akin to liquid paper at the sight of thick, coagulating blood all along her shoulders and back, running in beads down her shoulders and neck and chest, her hair dried with it and stiff. It's only a moment longer before she starts screaming bloody murder, and rabid laughter rings outside her door.


	5. Clothes

Currently, the last few hours have been devoted to Michelle freaking the fuck out. She paces around the small, almost claustrophobic pseudo-cell, a windowless concrete room apparently once used as some sort of storage (there are marks on the walls where what could ostensibly have been shelves might have been bolted there), her hair still damp. She did take his advice on the shower; the blood was grotesque and made her sick to her stomach to see on herself in the cracked bathroom mirror. Why they had even put a bathroom connected to what was apparently a storage room is a mystery to her, but then again, she's got more important things to think about than odd building plans. A single, aged fluorescent light burns above her in an unsettling brightness, casting sepia-toned light across the room and herself pacing within it.

_There has to be a way out, somehow, _A voice of reason calls out to her, and she thinks on it a moment before becoming highly dispirited at the idea of just how impossible that might be. _Yeah, through God knows how many armed guards and whatever the hell possible area we're in. We could be in the goddamn outskirts of Gotham for all I know. _Michelle continues to ponder her situation, though every moment she does, she becomes more and more despairing at the impossible odds stacked against her survival.

"I'm going to die here," She finally states in a tone of voice filled with an odd hysteria, and she spends a moment laughing quietly, terrified, running a hand through her damp hair over and over again until it begins to tangle and knot around her fingers. "There's no question about it, either! There's…no…oh _God_…" Her hand covers her face for a moment, wanting to cry, before she thinks back to the party and thinks about how she got in this situation in the first place.

"James…that bastard!" Her mood swings suddenly, and now she's more interested in a silent tirade cursing the man in every single way she knows how, before the tirade against James turns into a tirade against…well, _everything_. It's everybody's fault but hers for this horrible situation: it's James' fault for shoving her, it's Wayne's fault for throwing the fundraiser, it's Dent's for even having the fundraiser thrown for him, it's Nathan's fault for wanting her to come to the damn party, it's Joker's fault for deciding that he wanted to use her for a hostage, it's everybody's fault for everything.

Anger is much easier to deal with than sorrow. It's much, _much_ easier to deal with; at least, for Michelle it is. In fact, she's in the middle of calling just about every angel and demon that she can remember about ten different bad names each when the door opens and somebody tosses something in, before slamming the door shut again. Michelle, preoccupied with blaming the universe for her problems, doesn't get a good look at who it was, but does get a good look at what they've thrown in. She halts her blaspheming (for now, anyway, because she's sure she'll start up again later) and slowly walks over towards the bundle of what appears to be cloth, before leaning down and scooping the bundle up. She unfurls a too-big whitish colored t-shirt and an off-brown jacket draped over it, along with a pair of jeans that are about a size or two too big for her. A pair of dirty white sneakers tumbles to the floor as she unrolls the clothing. The clothes look like they belonged to somebody else with a bigger frame before being tossed in, and Michelle goes a bit pale when she notices the splattering of red on the collar and in drip spots on the jeans.

"What the hell?" She asks rhetorically, before looking down at her dirty, torn black dress and then to the new clothes. She supposes that she can't run around in a little black dress all the time, but these clothes look like somebody was wearing them…recently. The reddish stains (she's hoping that they're not blood) are still wet.

"Oh god, oh god oh god oh god oh god oh _gawd_," The terror sets in and she's pacing in a tight circle around the center of the room, unconsciously clutching the clothing tight to her chest as some sort of reminder that there's an outside world on the other side of her door, panicking. He wants her to change into something easier to move around in, because something is going to happen soon.

_It's all moving too fast! It's been, what, a couple hours? I think…there's no clock in here and the bastard nabbed my cell phone from my purse. I'm going to die in here!! _The last thought arrives from literally nowhere; she randomly decides that she's going to die soon and continues to panic about it. But her feet ache from the heels; she can't continue pacing like this or she's going to slip and break her ankle and then be put down like some sort of champion racehorse past their prime, and so she sits down on the uncomfortable mattress and then stares down at somebody's clothing in her hands.

"I can either put it on…or don't."

Sometimes, people just need to hear the obvious. This is one of those times.

"If I don't…I'll be killed. If I do…I'll be killed, but _later on."_

It only takes her a moment or so before she hesitantly walks into the bathroom and closes the door behind her, slowly peeling off the bloodstained dress (there's more blood on her from the transfer of the dress against her skin and she spends a minute furiously washing it off until the area is pink and sore from the effort, but damn it all it's **clean**) before pulling on the new clothes and noticing that they really are a lot bigger than what would fit her. The jeans are baggy and look worn, like someone wore them to work at a job involving a lot of physical work and the shirt hangs down to her upper thighs. The brown jacket is slightly longer, about an inch or so below the t-shirt's bottom. The shoes are loose, but they're snug enough to walk in at moderate comfort.

"They're really baggy…" Michelle notes aloud, the sleeves of the jacket coming down to her palm, as she models for herself in the mirror. The red smear on her face is gone, scrubbed off painfully until there was no trace of it left except for pink where the skin was rubbed too hard, and without her makeup on to make her look fabulous enough to attend a fancy party, she looks rather plain. Boring. Boring is good.

"We didn't seem to have any transvestites willing to give up their wardrobe, so you'll just have to make do," Someone states nonchalantly from the doorway on Michelle's right, and she positively _screams_ before tripping and falling backwards, smacking her head on the porcelain of the bathtub when she trips into it. She opens her eyes again and is scandalized to see that the Joker sneaked up on her when she was playing dress up. Then it hits her that he's been there for a little while, most likely.

"WH-what the hell are you doing in here?! How did you get through the front door without…without…?" She starts out indignant but falters as she goes on, eventually fading out into a muted silence.

"If you're not clumsy, then it's easy to open a door without falling into something and making a scene," He's casually teasing (or outright mocking) her as she stares blankly at him, and though he wasn't gunning to make her angry or anything, she's not doing anything at all and it's definitely not the reaction he had expected. He does trace her stare, though, and once he realizes exactly what she's staring at, his smile turns rather sardonic.

"Oh, did you notice the scars? They're disturbing you, aren't they?" He asks in a dangerously casual tone, now smiling in another way that looks slightly more…unhinged, than anything else. She doesn't really move at all or respond. "Do you want to hear how I got them?"

Michelle notices that something's changed about him as soon as that topic showed up; something's different, something's dangerous, something is **wrong**. The tone of his voice jumps a note or so higher as he asks her the last question, and she shakes her head, never looking away from him in the doorway.

"U…um…no, no thank you…?" She hopes that it's the right answer, and her tone betrays her nervousness. She pulls herself out of the bathtub, and spots more red drops on her sleeve and turns paler. She edges around him in the doorway and rolls up the sleeve of the jacket, to cover up the stain with her back to Joker.

"You have a problem with blood, don't you?"

He knows he's right, because the moment he suggests it, she freezes. If she has such a phobia of it, then she's not going to make a good extra hand during any of his plans for Gotham, and that would be _unfortunate_.

"It makes me kind of…uneasy…" She mutters, and feels the weight of an arm settling on her right shoulder.

"Can't stands me a _liar_, Michelle," She hears him say in her ear, and shoves his arm off her shoulder before taking a step away.

"I don't answer to you anyway," She snaps, and not a moment later is jerked by her hair back against him, her hair pulled so that her head is angled upwards and she can see his face out of the corner of her eye.

"Oh, but that's where you're wrong. You _do_." Joker adds extra inflection on that last word, and feels her heart speed up to a pounding in her chest pressed against him when the edge of a knife presses against her cheek, hard. "Because I _own_ you now. Oh you can say that I'm wrong, that nobody owns you or something inspiring like that, but you know it's the truth, don't you?" She doesn't give any answer and he hooks the very tip of the knife in her mouth, as a steady warning. She sucks in a shuddering gasp when he does, her hands balled into tight fists at her side. "You see, this little…fort, it's mine. And so is everything in it. Everything. Do you understand?"

She doesn't move at all again, and he pulls her hair harder, which in turn makes the knife press harder and harder into the corner of her mouth.

"Under_staaand_??"

"Yes!" She yelps like a dog, and he shoves her away from himself, hard. She staggers forward and lays her palm flat against the cold concrete wall, the other hand to her mouth, and the Joker notices that there's blood on his knife. He must have nicked her. She's not just panicking though; she's physically shaking (and shaking hard), and he takes interest in this. He was expecting fear, yes, but this is full-blown **horror**; complete and utter terror. Her shoulders are shaking and he thinks that she's sobbing silently.

Well that's interesting. Maybe there's something that he's missing. PTSD, maybe. Anyway, it's still interesting, to some extent. Shrugging it off (something to maybe play around with later, if he remembers and has the time), he wipes the knife off on the back of her jacket and pats her on her head like a dog, his voice normal and almost soothing, in a very strange way.

"I think we're going to have fun together. I really mean that, Michelle."

Scratch soothing; he's just fucking with her again. She doesn't look back at him and he's fine with that for now; it's funny enough as is, and it gets even funnier when he actually does leave the room and hears her start wailing on the other side of the door. He claps his hands and lets out a sharp barking laugh, already heading down the hallway. Bringing her back was a good idea after all, it seems, if just to see what sort of trauma he can inflict. It'll serve as a good distraction, in any case.


	6. Blackouts

She has no idea exactly how long she's been in that room. But she knows it's been a…while.

Michelle is sure that he's going to kill her soon, though. She's not interesting. She's as boring a person as humanely possible. For the last however long since he reminded her who top dog was, she's been weepy and boring. That changes on occasion, when she damn near randomly becomes angry (they're horrible mood swings) and rages at the heavens and everything under them, but that's not fun; that's futile. Sure, there's probably some amusement factor in seeing (or hearing) a woman screaming at a concrete ceiling, attempting to provoke God into coming down so they can argue it out face-to-face, but it never lasts long, and she never finds a reason to believe that He's even listening.

When she's not wandering around the room in a daze, she's sitting on the mattress and waiting for something, dear god _anything_ to happen. They still feed her (it's grunts that do the job, because she's caught sight of the uncanny clown masks they wear in the open crack of the door), so they still know she's here, but there's only so much time one can have when they're living on the whims of a very unbalanced psychopathic terrorist. Michelle knows that she's living on borrowed time.

And then, one day, _out of the blue_, they toss something else in. It's not food, it's paper with inked lettering on it. It takes her a moment to recognize that it's a newspaper, before she practically dives for it and goes to sit in the bathtub, door closed, tropical print shower curtain drawn. It's not like she's any more isolated here than out there (indeed; there isn't a lock on the bathroom door), but it's all psychological. She's here, alone, in a small place that she can _control_. And the newspaper is clutched to her chest so tightly that the white t-shirt has ink stains on it when she peels the front page off of herself, taking delight in the one link to the outside world that she has.

Well, a lot seems to have happened while she was gone. And there's a good explanation why she hasn't seen the Joker lately. People are dying like animals; she doesn't really recognize most of them, because she's always left the political side well enough alone, but there was an attempt on the Mayor. Some guy died to save his life; Michelle's scanning the words too quickly to recognize any names. In any case, that's on the front page. She flips through the pages, hunting for any sort of recognition that she's been kidnapped, that she's gone. That she's important to someone, somewhere. _Anywhere_.

On her second hunt through the newspaper, she finds a small article about a missing woman. An unidentified woman used as a hostage for the Joker. She's unnamed, and no one has stepped forward to identify her. She's presumed dead.

At first, it's anger that she feels. It's directed towards Nathan, towards that useless coward James, and towards whatever sick minded God could ever allow it all to happen this way. She has no allies, no friends, nothing at all. Nathan wants to save face; James wants to cut all ties with her; the people she works with at the bookstore are the owners, a senile old couple that, though they're very kind to her, still don't know her name and misplace documents so often that they probably have no idea who she is anymore. And nobody mourns a clown.

After the anger fades, and she realizes exactly how hopeless the situation is, she throws the newspaper against the wall of the bathtub and presses her ink-stained palms over her face, hiding her eyes, and she screams. It's not a very long scream, and it's not a very loud one, but it's a high-pitched keening, a wail of despair from the very centre of her spirit. The fear of death is settling on her shoulders again, heavy like lead and sharp, like the knife that's probably going to gut her soon. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week, maybe in two minutes; it doesn't matter when it happens, because it's _going_ to happen. There's absolutely no way that the situation can become any worse.

That's when the lights go out, and Michelle King is drenched in total, terrifying darkness. She bounds out of the bathtub, but trips and falls (clumsy woman she is) and very slightly nicks the edge of the small counter that the sink is situated in. If she's injured she has no idea, because she wrenches open the bathroom door to find that it's not just her bathroom light gone out; the room's light has gone out too, and she's got no way out of this horrible pitch blackness.

She starts screaming again, and this time, it _is_ long, _and_ loud, _and_ shrill.

* * *

The building lights have gone out. Breaker flipped. He's sent some poor bastard down to the basement to find the breaker box and fix it. But right now, the Joker is on a mission of pure interest. As soon as the lights went out, a captive woman started screaming. Bloody. Murder. If there isn't a good reason why she's screaming, then there _is_ going to be a bloody murder. Sure, the building is pitch black, and the thugs of his, the intelligent lot they are, are tripping all over themselves trying to navigate the building. They're not calm enough about it to actually be able to move around in the dark. He himself has a hand on the smooth concrete wall, sliding it along as he walks so that he has a way to track where he is.

Well, the screaming getting ever closer is also a good way to find out where he's going, too. That does help. Joker does notice, however, an odd scratching, scraping noise as he gets closer to the room. It sounds like someone's lighting matches off of concrete. And just as his hand closes around the door, the lights come back on. It took long enough. The screaming cuts off into ragged sobbing, and the scratching noise stops.

When he tries to open the door, there's weight against it. He gives it a good kick and there's the noise of something getting knocked back, and the door swings open enough for him to see her. And she's a disgusting, pathetic mess, clutching her hands close to her body and practically wailing. It's wretched. It's pathetic.

It's annoying.

"Is there a _problem_?" He doesn't bother with a greeting, and the last word is clipped; he's in a bad sort of mood, and a rather expendable woman screeching like a banshee isn't helping it either. Michelle just hangs her head and continues to sob from her place on the floor, her long hair hanging as a tangled veil that hides her face. She's _ignoring_ him.

Her crying is interrupted when he snatches her by the hair and pulls her up enough to see her face, and she's terrified of how angry he looks.

"_Answer me_." Joker growls and that's when Michelle knows that she's on very, very thin ice now. When she tries to answer, though, she can't be understood because of all the choking and the stuttering as a result of her crying. He gives up and throws her to the floor, roughly, before spotting her hands barely in view. They're bloody, and her nails are torn and cracked. And when he looks to the concrete wall beside the door, he sees the bloody streaks along the gray cement. It goes pitch black for maybe ten, twenty minutes, and she's trying to claw her way out of the room, through a concrete wall. The dark is a trigger for something. And, seeing how she's still sobbing to herself on the floor, it's a trigger for something very traumatic.

He doesn't care, of course. Trauma or not, the sound of her sobs is starting to grate on his nerves.

"Shut up." He says, almost quietly, and she tries, god_damn_ does she try. She doesn't try hard enough, and she doesn't quit crying. He whirls around and grabs her by the front of her shirt, dragging her to her feet roughly. "**_SHUT UP!!"_**

This time she goes completely quiet, terrified into silence at the pressure of a knife on her jugular. It's pressed so tightly into her flesh that she's already been cut, and blood rolls down to soak into the collar of her t-shirt, though the old blood stains there are already dark brown and dried.

"I-I-I'm s-so-sorry!" Michelle whimpers, raising her bloodied hands in surrender. She's so wretched, so pathetic, so disgustingly _human_, and for a moment, he decides on cutting her throat right then and there. To hell with waiting for some sort of amusement factor from her later; if she's so pathetic, then she **deserves** to die. And when the knife presses tighter, cutting deeper, she seems to think of something. Something that makes her stop crying.

Something that makes her start laughing.

He throws her to the opposite wall, and she doesn't stop. All of a sudden, she's not wailing anymore, she's laughing like she's heard the funniest joke in the entire world. They're dry, wheezing laughs, come straight up from the lungs. They're hysterical. Maybe, he thinks, maybe she's lost her mind. And the sudden laughter is so odd that for a moment, it throws him out of his bad mood from the confusion of it.

"What's so funny?" He asks her, perplexed, and she sits up from her seat leaning against the concrete wall opposite of him. Michelle is still crying, a steady stream of tears running down her cheeks, but she looks up at him without fear in her eyes and says one word.

"Pagliacci!" She shrieks, still cackling with mad laughter, before laying a hand over her eyes and putting a hand on her stomach. They're not happy laughs; they're painful sounding laughs, completely dry and wheezy and there's a distinct edge of sadness to them as well. He just stares at her, not comprehending. The laughter turns into dry choking, a guttural gagging noise that sounds absolutely horrible. He can't tell if she's laughing or if she's crying anymore. And at this point, he's not even angry anymore, doesn't even want to kill her at the moment. But, before he leaves, Joker does give a good kick to her midsection, and the air gets knocked out of her so that she can't laugh anymore.

"Make another noise and I'll _gut_ you." He growls, though the venom in his voice is gone now, before walking out and slamming the door behind him. There's something wrong with her, there's something incredibly damaged about the woman. She's completely silent in her room again, though he thinks he may hear very quiet chuckling, and marches off to wait. It's only a matter of time before Batty has to pull off his mask (he's a guilty one), and the Joker's going to wait for the big show. And, in a flash of very colorful chaos, like all of his good ideas, he gets an idea of what he's going to do with Michelle. It'll be grand.

* * *

**((Just in case nobody got it: Pagliacci is the name of a play about clowns that act in a play. The main clown and leader of the troupe, Pagliaccio, has a miserable life. Michelle's figured out that her stage name has come true, in a way, and finds it ironically hilarious.**

**Plus, she's a little bit off. You can sorta tell. And, if you've got criticism, can tell me if I suck or not at writing the Joker (I can't tell but I'm paranoid), even if you've got absolutely nothing relating to the story to say, I'd be happy to have another review or two. You know, it sorta brightens the day and all.**

**:D))**


	7. Raids

Her laughter died a long time ago; she's alone with her own dread silence now.

Michelle still has no idea how long she's been down here. It's kind of driving her crazy, actually; she wants to ask the masked goons about it, but they always ignore her when she does. Assholes. She hasn't seen neither hide nor hair of the Joker either; he's probably busy, which is perfectly fine with Michelle. She's happy to have him forget about her; maybe she can just die of starvation instead of being gutted with a knife or something. She'd actually probably die of dehydration a lot faster, now that she thinks about it…no, she's got a bathroom sink to drink from, so it's starvation that's coming first…

She's calmed down again, at least. It took a little while, but she calmed down again. It always goes like that; she's sad, then terrified, then cries herself hoarse and falls asleep. Or, in whenever ago's case, laughs herself into muteness for a couple hours and then passes out from so much exhaustion.

"I'm so bored, I'm starting to narrate my life to myself." She finally states aloud, almost startled at the sound of a voice in the room dominated so very much by thick silence. She's definitely going mad from the silence. At least the power hasn't gone out again, because she probably couldn't handle that again.

And then, after hours and hours and _hours_ of maddening silence and boredom, something happens again. Like a bolt from the blue, the door opens and someone actually walks in. It's a masked goon, their clown mask formed into a grotesquely overdone grin, and she stares blankly at the intruder into her boring little world.

"Hey, come on," The goon, a man by the sound of it, barks at her, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her. She's too stunned to fight back for a moment, and when she does try to pull out of his hold, he tightens his grip and drags her along. "Quit fightin' already; we got enough problems tryin' to set up in time." He sounded terribly hurried, nervous, and Michelle just stared at him for a moment.

"Set up? For what?" She's never been good with intelligent questions. And she can almost hear the goon roll his eyes at her, as his grip on her wrist tightens again and he continues to drag her down the alien hallways, a stark, concrete jungle now and then interrupted by a large red stain that makes her stomach sink.

"God, shut the hell up already," The man leading her snaps, and Michelle raises an eyebrow at him. Sure, she's not anything special at all, but there's still an ego in her, and for some ungodly reason, she thought that she'd be getting special treatment or something.

It sounds incredibly stupid when she actually thinks about it, but eh, what can she do?

It doesn't really matter where they're going, because soon after she asks and is rebuked, the goon shoves her into a room and pushes past her, slamming the flimsy wooden door behind them. There are other henchmen in this room, all wearing masks, all seeming to be preparing for something big. They all look up at her and then begin to ignore her, continuing their preparations. The area is a dim concrete room (like every other room in this building), with a large table in the center of the room. This table has many expensive looking guns on it, and is that a bazooka? Anyway, it doesn't matter what it is; there are weapons on the table, and there are people moving in and out of the room at a quick clip, moving the weapons out of the room towards somewhere else.

After five minutes of just plain staring at everything, no idea of what to do, Michelle is noticed by one of the thugs. He groans in frustration of her not doing anything, not moving like the well-oiled machine the group should've been, before tossing something at her. She fumbles it and then picks it up off the floor, taking a look at what he's thrown her.

"Slap that on and get your ass in gear. Joker's orders."

Michelle stares down at the ugly rubber clown mask and blinks, then begins to pale even further, standing in the corner of the concrete room and staring blankly at the ugly mask. When she speaks, her voice is extremely hoarse in terror.

"You're shitting me."

She looks up at them, almost hoping that they're joking and that she can go back to her room and rot there, alone, but they don't look up from her and continue their preparations. The door flies open suddenly and Michelle is standing right behind it as it does; the flimsy wooden door smashes into her left shoulder painfully, bouncing off of her and coming back towards the one who threw it. She whimpers in pain (it's not agony, just moderately painful, and by now she's realized that making a lot of noise usually pisses somebody off) and watches the Joker walk in without noting her being there, already looming over the shoulders of the henchman making their preparations. The men in the masks automatically became tenser; on-edge, and it doesn't help that mood when the Joker does little more than just stare at them and what they're doing, before heading back towards the door. He spots her, and she realizes that he's in a good mood today; his eyes glimmer in an odd sort of way, maybe with excitement, maybe with madness. It's hard to tell.

"Coming along for the ride? You'll have a _**blast**_," He says, making odd hand motions as he talks (he seems very excited, agitated almost), and she stares, deadpan.

"What?"

Michelle is, of course, as eloquent as ever. The Joker just seems to stare, as if she's stupid for not getting it and being as excited as he is, and he claps a gloved hand on her shoulder and drags her around to look at all the weapons on the table.

"Tonight, we're saying hello to our dear Harvey Dent on-route to county, and you're coming with us."

He reeks of gasoline and sweat, and the woman in his grip tries her damndest not to let her discomfort show. "No, no. I can't do this, Joker," She argues, before the grip on her shoulder increases so tightly that she grits her teeth in pain.

"Now you see, there's the thing. I don't _care_ if you think you can do this or not," He still sounds slightly giddy, though there's a dangerous undertone to his voice, one that's quietly threatening _I can always fix that, you know_. All the goons are watching while trying not to be too obvious about it. "We can't always get what we want, Michelle. Don't be so _selfish_." He pops the last word, and it sounds more like _selfish-ah_. Oh, so now **_she's_** the selfish one? She's almost angry enough to snap at him, but thinks better of it. He shoves her a step forward to get her out of his way and heads out the open doorway, the henchman already following him out. One grabs the mask from Michelle's hands and slaps it onto her face.

"Just do what he says, alright? Less of a goddamn headache for us if you just roll with it and stop being such a bitch about it," He snaps, before walking out the door himself. Michelle rights the mask on her face, and tries to think of any other way to get out of this. She can run back to her room, but he'll find her there. She can try and run out of the building, find an escape, but there are probably men (armed men) at every escape route.

Or, she can…well, roll with it and survive a bit longer.

It's not an easy choice. But after a moment longer of waiting, thinking, hoping some Deus ex Machina is going to save her somehow, she slowly follows a straggler goon out towards wherever they're going. It's horrible agony to willingly go towards some fresh sort of hell, and she wants to stop so damn bad, but she forces herself to go on, the beat of survival the only thing keeping her going.

_Live, live, live_, it pulses. _Survive, survive, survive_.

By the time she walks out into the cool night air, Michelle is almost numb to everything happening around her. She's pretty much unidentifiable from the other masked thugs; her clothes were obviously meant for a man, and with her face obscured, there's no way to tell her gender unless one was to look close or if she were to talk. There are a couple trucks, and one happens to be covered in graffiti. It originally seems to have said 'Laughter', but an S is sprayed before it to make it 'Slaughter', and a large HA HA HA sprayed on it as well. She's not sure where she's supposed to go, really, but someone grabs her and shoves her towards the Slaughter truck. She climbs in the back, seeing if she can distance herself from what's happening (**'YOU'RE AN ACCOMPLICE NOW, YOU'RE HELPING HIM'** her mind screams at her from some small corner of herself, but she tries to ignore it), and gets ammunition for some gun shoved into her arms. She looks at who's giving her these, and it's the Joker, a couple henchmen helping him prepare his side of the truck.

"Hold those," He tells her, and she nods accordingly, leaning against the wall of the truck dully. It's about ten, fifteen minutes before the truck rumbles to life beneath her, everyone shouting to one another and preparing to leave. Someone grabs her by the sleeve of her jacket and drags her over to sit next to themselves, and it doesn't surprise her that it's the Joker.

"Don't look so depressed," He tells her, and she's suspicious of how he knows that she's frowning behind her mask. He then smiles at her, and the scars at the corners of his mouth add to the effect of making his smile seem inhumanely large in the dim light, and it terrifies her. "You should _smile_."

She stares for a moment, horrified, before he pulls up her mask to see if she's smiling or not. From the moment his fingers touch her rubber mask, she's pulling a horrendous grin, a very fake, very ugly smile. He pushes her mask back down again as they start moving forward, a gentle push that makes them sway slightly.

"You're _learning_, aren't you?" He sounds pleased with this, and she just nods her head tiredly.

"Yessir," She answers obediently, and a crackle of his laughter snaps through the back of the truck, as her head droops slightly. There's no doubt that she's going to burn for this one. The Joker's laughter quiets down, and he shoves her back a few feet, next to a pile of weaponry.

"When I tell you, toss me what I ask for. That's all you're doing. Don't mess it up." He doesn't trust her. It's a good idea not to. She nods her head, and falls into silence. There's a tension in the air, highly tangible, and it's powerful. Those in the truck are all fidgeting, somewhat, including Michelle. Everyone is nervous, with one glaring exception, that being the Joker himself, still in a rather good mood.

Michelle has no idea how long they drive, but eventually, they come to a stop. The Joker crouches, moving slowly towards the driver's window, holding a gloved hand out towards her, waiting for something. Since he hasn't specified anything in particular, she carefully lays a shotgun in his open palm. A moment later, he fires and blood mists the driver's left half, and Michelle turns as pale as a sheet. They start moving forward right as she crawls to the corner of the truck, heaving. The Joker grabs her by the ankle and pulls her back, before getting a hold on the back of her shirt and pulling her into a sitting position, as her back thumps against the truck's side.

"You're so delicate, you know that? It's not a good trait to have in this line of work, Missy."

And now she has a pet name. It's disgusting. Michelle's too busy dry heaving to argue with him (apparently, not being fed in a while was planned so that she didn't vomit in the truck with them). She pulls her head between her knees and hides it there, and hears him tsk next to her.

"You're going to miss all the fun if you hide your face. Besides, that cop was pretty lucky. At least he went out with a _bang_." There's nervous, forced laughter at the bad pun, and Michelle just quivers and remains in that position. And, out of completely nowhere, they slam into something and she goes flying like a ragdoll. He snatches her by the front of her shirt and shoves her next to the weapons, moving from a sitting position to a crouching position.

"Be _useful_, Missy," He chimes to her, as she grabs a gun and throws it to him while the cargo doors slide open. Instantly, machine gun fire rattles off deafeningly, and Michelle claps her hands over her ears. Damn it all, she wasn't _meant_ for this sort of hell! She gets a hard shove on the shoulder, and he's pointing towards a gun lying beside her left thigh. She snatches it up and hands it to him, and as she does, begins to see something whizzing towards them. The second truck she saw earlier on is smashed into by the black vehicle of some sort (it's alien to Michelle) and disintegrates while the black vehicle zooms on ahead. She gapes at it, while another thug says something to the Joker. The truck bounces slightly and she nearly topples out of the open cargo door. The Joker saves her with a smash to the face with the RPG in his hands, and she goes rolling backwards with a hand to her face. Her mouth is agonizing; he's broken a tooth off at the gum line with that. Joker himself doesn't notice; he's aiming at the armored car they've been pounding on. When he fires it hits another car instead, and he turns towards the thugs (including herself) in the truck with him.

"Do me up," He orders, and she's not sure how to actually reload an RPG, so she just watches them reload it, before he turns back and aims the gun again. But when he fires, there's an explosion pretty close to them and the blast knocks Michelle back again against the wall, then down to the bottom of the truck. Her hair is plastered to her skin by sweat and she's panting like a dog; this truck is a living Hell, and she wants out. But the Joker, he's cackling like a madman as he gets knocked around the trailer as well. More than anything else in the entire truck, in the entire scenario, in the entire goddamn city of Gotham, she's afraid of the Joker. He's completely at home in this hell; he even enjoys it, it seems. He's a monster.

It's about then that she notices the truck's stopped. _Maybe_, she thinks,_ maybe it's all over. Maybe we can't go on anymore. Maybe we're just giving up._ She'd like to think that. But after a moment, and some muffled noise from a voice that she can't quite discern at the moment (there's a deafening ringing in her ears from all the noise), the truck starts up again and starts on its hellish rampage again.

"Up and at 'em, Missy; the night's still young! Didn't I tell you that you'd have a blast?" She hears him cackle, and rolls onto her stomach. Her eyes close for a moment before she forces herself to her knees, her ugly clown mask on crooked now. Her ears are still ringing, and she wants to vomit, if not just to relieve the horrible nausea she's feeling from being tossed around so much. Not to mention that blood is still running down her chin from where Joker clocked her with the RPG to keep her from hurtling to her death, which, in all seriousness, would probably have been too easy a way out for her.

"Tee 'em up," She hears someone say, and the sound of chopper blades hums from somewhere outside the truck. Someone else is talking into the radio and after a minute of trying to steady her nerves, Michelle actually looks up outside the moving truck, placing both hands on the cargo door and leaning out into the whipping breeze, staring in awe. She also happens to look in time to see a chopper catch something invisible and go down in a fireball, which makes her almost lose her grip on the steel door with the terror of it. One of the thugs grabs her by her hair and jerks her back into the truck, screaming something at her about being a suicidal moron, as she simply closes her eyes and lies in the back of the truck, trying to block it all out.

She's not brave. She's not a strong woman, or an exceedingly clever woman, or very good with words. She's not a hero. She's just an average citizen caught up in something way beyond her capacity to handle, and it terrifies her.

She hears them talking about something else, and her curiosity happens to get the best of her. She crawls over to where the Joker stands, kneeling at his feet, and watches in awe of the little black motorcycle looking machine zooming towards them. It fires something at them, and it goes too low and misses them. She lets out a sigh of utmost relief at seeing it miss; for a second there, things looked like they were going to get bad or something. The little black vehicle zooms out of sight, and Michelle actually lets herself relax for a minute, a moment, god forbid even a second. It's all over. She's still alive.

And there's an odd metallic pinging sort of noise. Not too long after that, she's not sitting anymore, because they're not on four wheels anymore. She shrieks in terror as the truck flips, slamming her against the walls of the truck like a pinball. She smacks her head hard and blacks out for a moment, unable to do anything but lay there and try to regain her hearing, her sight, her anything; there's a sharp pain in her shoulder for some reason, a stabbing pain, and she's laying on whatever's causing the pain, making it worse. Someone kicks her out of their way- she's guessing that it's the Joker-and moves to her left, before she hears a faint buzzing noise. Slowly, her vision begins to return, fuzzy at first before it clears up and her hearing returns as well. She groans in pain, rolling onto her back and hissing at the pain from the action. She opens one eye and looks at the shoulder with the stabbing pain in it; there's a knife lodged deep in her shoulder. Probably one of the Joker's. She probably rolled onto it in the crash. After a minute longer, she moves to her knees slowly and crawls for the one visible way out, and once she reaches the concrete, figures out that there's glass there and that she's crawling right across it. The stabbing pains in her bare hands are ignored, as she moves forward a bit and then sits back against the wreckage, watching the scene playing out in front of her.

"Fuck you God," Michelle breathes blasphemy, her voice dry and cracking. Something hot and thick and sticky rolls down from her forehead and into her eye, and she clenches the eye shut as it does. With shaking, cut-up fingers, she brushes the blood away with the back of her hand, and opens her good eye just in time to see the Joker leaning over Batman, switchblade in hand. And somebody is there, pointing a gun at him. After a moment, he drops the knife and sits down, and people are already moving to arrest him. They then look at her, the clown mask hanging sideways off of her face, before she reaches up and rips it off, that is, a bloody mess against the Joker's truck. People are already walking towards her, guns drawn, ordering her to the concrete.

She had already been expecting that sort of reaction, really. And so she lays down as best she can, her hands behind her back, they're very rough with her as they handcuff her and force her to walk. Michelle is wheezing as they walk her towards the cop car, blood running down her chin and down her face, her shoulder soaked with blood (she ripped the knife out by accident when she was crawling out of the wrecked car), and she looks as miserable as she feels. A moment later, they roughly shove her into the back seat of a cop car, and she just sits there limply, her hands cuffed behind her back.

"Fancy seeing you here. Small world, ain't it?" She hears the Joker murmur next to her, and she glares at the seat ahead of her (the policeman that caught the Joker is driving, and she's staring at the back of his seat) as the squad car begins to move.

"Oh _fuck_ you."


	8. Cops

"You know I blame you for everything, right?" Michelle asks dully, her bandaged hands folded in her lap. The glass has been picked out of her hands, and the wounds have been wrapped tight by clean white bandages. The quick work of someone wanting to lock her up as quickly as possible.

"I'd guessed. But you know," The Joker says from his spot on the bench beside her, now down to just the vest with the hexagonal patterns that make Michelle dizzy to look at (they confiscated his long purple coat, and at the moment, are counting out all the knives they took out of his pockets), "You _did_ have a choice."

"Oh?" She asks, in monotone, glancing sideways at him from the corner of her eye. "And how was that? It was doing what you said or being killed."

"Exactly. You could've just picked to die, instead of joining us on this…_wild_ night. There's always a choice." At 'wild', he waves his hand in a circular motion, as if the rather traumatic events of the night could be personified as a sort of tornado. Michelle just groans under her breath, sitting as far away from him on the bench as possible, burying her face in her sore hands.

"That's not a choice. That's not…_fair_."

"Oh, but it is. You had two, count 'em, two choices, and you picked one of them. That's perfectly fair, don't you agree?" He holds up two fingers to illustrate the point even further, and she glares at him from between her fingers before sighing and leaning back against the cell wall.

"You're insane."

"And who's to say that you _aren't_?"

Now that throws her off. She doesn't answer him, and though his voice holds a tinge of something that sounds like controlled annoyance, anger (or maybe amusement? She can't tell) as he says it, she pretends that she didn't hear him and instead stands, beginning to pace. The two of them are getting glares from everyone in the entire department, it seems; it's not surprising. She hasn't even tried to proclaim her innocence yet, because they won't listen to her, they don't listen to anything she says to them, such as her winces when they move her injured self around roughly, or when she asks to be in a different cell than the Joker.

_"All the others are filled," they tell her, "and the only other cell that we could put you in is full of men."_

_"The Joker is a man." Michelle notes, as they finish patting her down for weapons (there are none) and her brown jacket is confiscated. Her hands are re-cuffed behind her back as they turn her around and shove her into walking with them, already leading her towards the cell with the Joker waiting idly inside of it. Michelle distantly thinks of what poor bastard had to pat him down, and feels a bit bad for him, before she almost trips and that snaps her back to reality._

_"Yes," The very annoyed female officer walking behind her growls, "But we can watch one guy easier than ten." She gives no room for argument, and Michelle offers none as the door is slid open, the cuffs are pulled off of her wrists, and the Joker waves slightly as Michelle is shoved inside and the metal doors clang behind her._

A cop walks by and slams his nightstick against the bars near the Joker's head, and while the loud noise makes Michelle jump, the man beside her doesn't even flinch. His calmness at the moment is too eerie to let her calm down enough, now that they're caught. Well, he's caught; she's not sure what's going to happen to her. A man walks in and orders they all stand down, and Michelle raises her head to look at him. He looks middle aged, but dignified, and she sort of respects that for some reason. She recognizes the picture of the dead man that saved the life of the mayor and figures out that this is the same man, and blinks. That's something you don't see every day.

"What do we got?" She hears the mayor ask, and doesn't look up to them because she settles back in the holding cell, her eyes closed. Lord is she tired. This Gordon (she's caught his name by now) recites in a very eloquent manner that they don't know jack shit about the Joker, before the mayor gestures to her and she raises her head, now staring on bored. Bandages wrap around her forehead from where her scalp was cut, and there's a dark bloodstain running from her hairline down her cheek and circling her eye.

"And her?" He asks, and Michelle sighs. She's already given a very scant report to them, as it's all they wanted to hear from her; her name.

"Michelle King, she says. We've got a file."

Michelle visibly flinches and the Joker glances up, now somewhat interested. Gordon goes on.

"Michelle Harley Queen, name changed to King after adoption, age thirty three. No living blood relatives, only an adoptive brother; Nathan Anderson. Adoptive parents deceased as well," Gordon reads aloud from a file that had been retrieved for him, as Michelle taps her foot on the floor at a relatively quick pace. "No aliases, no prior arrest record. Nothing but lint in _her_ pockets."

There's something he reads and then his expression seems to darken, before he closes the file and glances at her. She's hanging her head, hair sweaty and blood-dried and stuck to her skin, but still hanging in her face enough to obscure it. The policemen seem to shrug it off, as the mayor speaks again, and tells Gordon to go home, naming him Commissioner. Everyone claps for him, even the Joker and, a moment after regaining herself, Michelle after she sits down beside the Joker again. The man took down a psychopathic terrorist and faked his own death, after saving the mayor's life from the same psychopathic terrorist; hell, she's impressed. Why not congratulate the guy?

As the crowd seems to disperse, Michelle calming down again, she can just _feel_ the Joker staring at her. After a few minutes of this silence, she eventually swings her head to glare at him and practically screams, "What?!" He smiles at her almost demurely, though whatever affection she might think she sees there is very, very fake. She knows it, too.

"Harley Queen?" He asks, coyly, and she just groans and puts her head in her hands as the cops tell her to shut up from their side of the bars. She gives them the finger when they turn their backs on her.

"You're going to make a horrible pun now, aren't you?"

"If I were going to do that, then I'd have called you Harlequin by now. You shouldn't make assumptions."

"I don't have any reason not to. I mean, it's **_you_**."

Yes, she's getting a little cocky being surrounded by policemen; sure, they hate her too, but they're not going to stand by and let him kill her or beat her or something, and he's probably not going to try while they're in here. He just closes his eyes and smiles to himself, as a thug in another cell complains of not feeling well. Not very much later, someone is walking towards the holding cell, accompanied by cops, and Michelle's eyes narrow.

"Michelle, baby," James says, in a warm and caring voice, rushing up to the bars (but sure not to touch them), eying the Joker warily before looking back to Michelle. She's just staring blankly at him. "I thought you were dead. I'm so glad to see you."

She rockets to the bars and sticks her hands in between them, her fingers closing around James' throat as she begins to throttle the life out of him.

"**You** did this to me! **You** did this! You, you, you you you you you **YOU**!!" She shrieks, throttling him wrathfully, before a cop maces her in the face. She lets go of him and her hands come back to her face, and as soon as she looks up through blurred tears at the noise in front of her, she's maced again, this time not just in the eyes; she inhaled it as well, so now her nose and throat and lungs burn like fire. When she drops against the bars, hands over her face and tears streaming down her face as she chokes, they take it as a charge at them and then they tazer her. Twice.

* * *

A half hour later (after she recovers somewhat from the accidental double-tazering), she's being processed. Her eyes are still stinging, her vision still blurred, her muscles spasming occasionally, and her mouth burns like she's eaten chili peppers. They take her prints and take her mugshot, which is looking beat half to hell by now, before she's lead somewhere other than back to the (now empty) holding cell that she was sharing with the Joker earlier on. It's a small room with nothing but a table and a cop sitting on the other side of it; she doesn't recognize whoever they are. There's a pad of paper and a pen between them; now they're trusting a Joker henchman (unwilling, but the grimy title remains) with a pen. They must really not be threatened by her, and she's not going to give them any reason to. Well, other than her trying to strangle James, but that's different.

"Sit." The cop orders, as she's lead to the chair (in handcuffs). She sits, before the male officer begins what Michelle already suspects is an interrogation. He takes the pen and paper and prepares to write, leaning back in his chair.

"Alright, King; let's go through all of this. Why'd you join up with him?" He asks, point-blank, and Michelle's not sure if this is regulation interrogation tactics or not, but then again, how would she know?

"I didn't _want_ to." She states, still looking very tired. No sleep in hours; days, it felt like. The cop raises an eyebrow. Of course he doesn't believe her.

"Right. Then how'd you end up with that mask on? In that truck?"

"I was kidnapped. At a party."

"_Riiight_."

There's silence for a moment as he scratches something down on the pad of paper, and she just sits there on the other side of the table. He's flipping through a file that she's staring very pointedly at. He shakes it in her face.

"Interesting history you've got here. Changed your name back in '96, didn't you?"

Her eyes follow every movement of the file, and she grits her teeth when he waves it in her face. "Yes, I did. After my parents died and I was adopted."

"Listen, let's cut the shit," The interrogating officer says, leaning forward on the table. He's young, and cocky, and probably doing this whole thing wrong. "You might as well give us a confession that you willingly joined that clown sucker's little knitting group," He jabs a thumb at the left wall for some reason, "'Cos nobody's going to believe that bullshit story about you being kidnapped and forced to help out."

When Michelle hears this, she leans forward over the table, angry. "It's not a bullshit story! My name is Michelle King, and I was kidnapped from the Wayne fundraiser party! There were so many people there that saw it; you can't be so stupid as to not be able to corroberate this." She jabs a thumb on the table, infuriated, and then throws herself against the back of the chair. At that same point in time, there's a loud slamming noise against the left wall, and it makes Michelle jump. "What the hell was that?"

"It's not important," The officer says distractedly, looking at her pointedly. "Alright, if you're not going to admit to that, then just tell us where Harvey Dent is."

"I didn't even know he was _gone!_ He's gone again?!"

"He's been kidnapped, and we're looking at you clowns."

"You guys are shitty cops; shouldn't you have been, oh _I don't know_, fucking **watching** him??" She snaps, her nerves far past frayed tonight. The cop leans back in his seat again, staring at his pad of paper as he writes. He doesn't answer any of her questions, of course. She's in a bad mood now, after James and all this shit. "Can I have my phone call?" She asks, staring at her dirty and sharply broken nails. She should probably file those down soon enough, maybe bite them. The cop drops a cell phone in front of her (this guy is still giving her the vibe that he's a very new or very stupid cop) and she dials Nathan's personal cell number, tapping her foot against the floor. It rings twice, before she hears his voice.

"Anderson."

"Nathan, it's Michelle."

There is silence on the other end for a moment.

"Michelle...where are you?"

"Gotham PD. Maced twice, then tazered twice. Now interrogated. Not happy here, Nathan."

"Well, I can't help that, now can I? It's not my fault that you helped a killer-"

"**I DID NOT HELP THE MAN**." She loudly growls into the phone, though trying to keep herself calm, and the cop stares at her for a moment before the door is opened behind Michelle's back.

"It's not looking that way, Michelle. You know, I can't really help you. It would be...bad publicity. Imagine what your adoptive parents- my parents, actually -would say if they were alive to see you." He talks very kindly, very gently, but his words sting as horribly as ever, and makes her feel horribly guilty for something she didn't want to do. Her voice is quivering as she pleads, leaning into the table and splaying her palm over it.

"Nathan, I'm...I'm _sorry_, I didn't have a choice-"

"But you _did_, Michelle."

That makes her freeze. She knew Nathan Anderson was heartless, but could he really be this cruel? She wants to cry, and she's on the verge of starting, like she always is when Nathan scolds her. Leaning back, she puts her elbow on the table and lays a hand over her eyes, hanging her head despondently.

"You're...you're joking, aren't you? Aren't you? Oh God, Nathan, you're **joking**, this is a _horrible_ joke..."

"Then do you want to hear the punchline?" He asks her, very calmly, and from his voice, it sounds like he's smiling on the other end and Michelle can almost see him drinking Cristal from a tumbler up in his penthouse as he speaks to her. "Here it is: I'm disowning you. You and I are no longer siblings, King. You're going to rot in prison, maybe even Arkham, and I'm never going to speak with you again after this phone call ends. Now, before I hang up on you and have someone start up the paperwork for getting a bloodsucking parasite removed from my family line, is there anything you'd like to say to me?"

It's not even a question of what she's going to say to him.

"This is the reason why your wife committed suicide I hope she's burning in hell waiting for you you sonofabitch-" She screams into the phone and instantly hears him hang up on her, while the cop interrogating her practically runs back to the table and rips the phone out of her hand, before running out the door with the other cop and slamming the door behind him.

And now she's alone. She puts her head in her hands and begins crying, while another cop walks in and stands against the wall to watch her.

* * *

It's been a few more minutes, and Michelle has her head down on the table, her cheek pressed against it; she's got a headache from crying and her eyes are red, her cheeks still flushed. She and the cop are ignoring one another. There's commotion outside, and the cop looks between Michelle and the door.

"I'm not moving." She says, dully, and after another moment of consideration, the cop goes to the door and looks out, before exclaiming "Shit!" and grabbing his gun, running out. Michelle knows that something is wrong. Something is very wrong. It's way, way too quiet.

An explosion rockets through the building. She was right. It makes her fall from her chair, before she grabs the paper and pen that the interrogating cop left behind and, very quickly, begins to write.

"My...name...is...Michelle...King..." She breathes out the words she's writing, before going silent and merely watching her hurried scrawling, her heart pounding like a drum. After a few precious moments of writing, she hears footsteps and flips the pad of paper over, so what she's written can't be seen, and looks at the door, eyes wide. Someone leans in the still slightly cracked door, and smiles when they spot her.

"We're leaving." The Joker states, his purple coat thrown over his shoulder, and he walks in quickly and grabs her by the upper arm, dragging her out the door at a good clip. After a moment of her keeping up with him he lets her arm go and throws her his coat, which she catches and holds to her chest, and runs after him as they head for the cells.

"What happened?" Is the only thing she can muster to ask. It's a very dumb question, yes, because it's kind of obvious what happened, but she has to ask anyway.

"We went out with a bang." Is all he'll tell her, and for a moment, Michelle really thinks about running away. Just running. He can't ostensibly catch her, can he? If she hides herself in the police department? He does have to escape, of course; maybe she can get away if she just makes herself too much trouble to catch.

But, where's she going to go after that? If she stays, they'll lock her up in prison- Nathan's warning about the possibility of that madhouse Arkham flits through her mind and makes her inwardly shiver -and that'll be the end of it for her. They'll eat her alive in prison. Nathan has abandoned her, the bastard. James probably wants to kill her now (he left, spitting insults at her, after she tried to strangle him) and she'd rather die or walk with the Joker than go back to that asshole. She's got no jobs left, and nobody is going to hire her. She's a wanted woman. Right now is the line between being forced to do what the Joker says and willingly following him.

There really is nothing left for her to go back to.

A moment later she comes back to reality to notice that the Joker has a hostage, some random guy he's holding a knife to- no wait, he's holding a _potato peeler_ to his throat -and leading away. "Coming?" He calls back to her, but doesn't stop walking, and after a horrible, horrible moment of trying to choose what she's going to do, Michelle runs after the Joker to catch up. "Good girl. I was thinking you'd try to run." He sounds at least marginally pleased, and she sighs.

"Yessir."

They hurry out of the building and after a moment, pile into a police car, the Chinese man shoved into the driver's seat. "Take the wheel." She barely hears the Joker tell him, before she opens the door to the back seat and drops into it, not really feeling it. Someone (she already knows who) drops into the seat to her left, and the car starts. His coat sits in her lap, like some horrible sort of purple knife-filled cat (_that's a horrendous simile,_ Michelle notes to herself, and wonders why she even thought of it), and she doesn't notice that the coat is wrapped around a flimsy file with her name on it. Michelle just stares, so blankly, out the window as they tear down the street, the lights of Gotham looking so much brighter than usual on this pitch-black night. She chances a glance at the Joker and he's hanging his head out the window like a dog, and he looks so peaceful, doesn't have a care in the world. She's envious. So much so that she doesn't want to see any longer, and turns back to stare out her own window.

"The night just gets blacker and blacker." She mutters, closing her eyes. There's an odd giggle to her left, or maybe that was just him clearing his throat, she can't tell.


	9. Pasts

"So...what now?"

Michelle asks, dully, as the car comes to a stop outside that lovely warehouse she's not looking forward to walking back into. The Joker pulls the coat out of her arms and opens his door, slamming it shut and pulling his coat on- Michelle is still inside the car and can't him put it on too well, but it looks like he's tucking something away -quickly, before she gets out and he glances at her.

"Well," He begins, pulling on a spare pair of gloves from his pocket, "Whatever I _feel_ like. You should've learned that by now, Missy." She just stares on, eye twitching slightly. "You're kind of useless, but I guess that everyone was at some point in time, too. You'll learn." He flashes her a smile, a rather deranged one, and she breaks eye contact and looks to the Chinese man still sitting in the car, not wanting to get out.

"What about this guy?" She asks, tapping her foot on the door. But when she looks back, the Joker is already walking towards the building, ignoring them almost, as a couple masked thugs (_where do they all come from,_ Michelle thinks, since she for some reason has thought that he would be running out of people willing to work for him, since everybody that works for him **dies**) walk out and grab the Chinese man, and her as well.

"Bring 'im." She thinks she hears the Joker call back, but can't be sure as one thug drags her towards the building and the other drags the as-of-yet-unnamed man too. So she's still treated as a prisoner, which kind of makes sense, since there's been no confirmation that she's not just trying to play them so that she can escape.

"Easy, easy!" She snaps at the masked man dragging her, and he just drags her harder in response, so she gives up as they walk into the building. It's still dim, dingy, smells like rot and mothballs (and blood, she notes), and though there are less masked thugs than before, they're still there, ambling around listlessly, playing cards, doing regular thug things. At least, Michelle thinks they're thug things; she hasn't ever been a thug before (though she's probably going to be pretty soon), and so she wouldn't really know. They drag her along, and toss her back in her room. Again. She wants to scream.

And, well, she does.

"MOTHER_FUCKER_." She shrieks, once, kicking the wall as hard as she can. Then she sits down, and she stares at the door, and goddammit all, she waits.

* * *

He's humming something as he strolls down the familiar hallways, a concrete jungle, her file in his hands. It'll be a good way to kill some time, at least, and if she starts giving him trouble, he can just traumatize her again. Maybe break the light for her room and let her rot in the dark for a day or two; that would work. The masked goons are parting like the Red Sea as they see the Joker, and he ignores them as he heads into his small office. And he drops into a rusted steel chair (it's going to break under him one day, he knows it will, but that's what makes this chair his favorite) and flips it open, skipping the boring parts like her blood type and finger prints.

"Now, let's see why Missy hates the dark."

It only takes a minute or two of reading the police file before he starts laughing.

* * *

Michelle is pissed.

She hasn't eaten in god knows how long, and all they throw her is an apple core. She's starving, and angry, and chewing on an apple core that's already been slobbered all over. She had thought it was a good idea to follow the Joker out of the PD, but now she's having second thoughts. How long has it been since they came back to the warehouse hideout? She had fallen asleep, so she now has no idea; it was dawn when they arrived, it could be any time now. Maybe a day, maybe two, maybe it's only been a couple hours. It's probably only been a couple hours.

The door opens and she glances up, glaring at the Joker as he smiles at her (she's too angry to notice that the way he's smiling isn't normal, isn't _natural_; there's something horrible about to happen but she can't see it). "What do **you** want?" She snaps, forgetting that _hey, you're in his world again, you'd better not be such a dumb bitch_, as he shuts the door behind him.

"Moody today? Can't imagine why_, Harley."_ He drags out her middle name and to Michelle, it sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.

"Don't call me that." She growls, and doesn't even realize her mistake as he ambles towards her, easily.

"Why not? Personally, I always liked that name."

"Yeah, I'm _really_ going to listen to what you like. You're crazy." Michelle still doesn't recognize her stupidity, at least, not until he grabs her by the back of the neck and drags her to the lone chair (bolted down) in the room..

"You know, I'm not. Really." He starts, speaking almost dismissively as she tries to fight him off and he slams her into the wall. "Everyone always says it though; I'm so _cray-zee_. But I'm not." Blood runs down the side of Michelle's face and she presses a hand over the cut on her forehead reopened by the slamming, still trying to shove him away from her. "But, I'll tell you what's **really** crazy. Crazy is a woman that stays with the husband that beats her until she can't see straight, because he _loves her_, he doesn't _mean it_." He grabs her wrists as she tries to punch him, and he presses his thumb against her forefinger and presses it back until it snaps, while she screams. "Crazy is all the little people on Wall Street running around like _**ants**_ when the stock market dips a few inches." Michelle tries to slam her foot down on his and he slides it out of the way, before slamming his knee between her legs; he hits bone, and he hits it _hard_. Instantly, her knees go weak and she drops, only held off the floor by the hand in her hair. "Crazy is a wife leaving her devoted husband when he takes a knife to himself to make her _happy_ again." He shakes her hard at that, her head hanging limply on her shoulders.

"Crazy," He says it quietly in her ear, already pulling her back towards the bolted down chair, "Is the reason you scream like a cat when the lights go out."

As soon as he tells her that, she jerks her head up to look at him, her eyes wide, mouth agape. He laughs in her face at the sight of it.

"That's right, I know. I've got to say, it's a pretty tragic story. For a minute," He throws her in the chair, and when she tries to shoot out of it and run towards the door, he socks her in the eye and she falls back into the chair, limply. "I thought it was some kind of mediocre Shakespeare play. It was _so tragic_ it looped back to _**hilarious**_." He snatches her hands and walks around behind the chair, handcuffing them there. "Stalker comes in and kills your parents, kidnaps you, at what, age fifteen? Ah, it doesn't matter. Keeps you in his pitch black **_basement_**, chained to the _**wall**_, for three years." He adds too much inflection on random words, barking them in her ear with a terrifying sort of glee at seeing her begin to shake. "Poor baby." He pats her cheek as he says it, seeing her begin to cry, before laughing and continuing on, already walking over to grab the extra rope laying in the corner of the room. "Then, one day, he unties you because you've been _good_. And what do you do to pay him back for that? You beat him to death with a chunk of concrete." He walks back, almost skipping really, faking a frown at her. "Not nice. I hope you're not thinking about trying that with _**me**_." He ties her up so that she can't move at all, getting more excited for the reaction once she actually figures out what he's going to do, instead of wallowing in her bad memories.

"Isn't the world a funny thing?" The Joker asks her suddenly, and she jerks her head up to look at him, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she just stares. He's not looking at her, staring off at the wall without a smile, and Michelle hangs on every word. "People say that there's good, that there's _**justice**_, but **you** know better, don't you? You know all about the world, and all its random injustice." He looks back to her, and for some reason, she gets hopeful that he's going to let her go, that he's going to pity her. "That's why I like you, Michelle. That's the only reason you're still _alive." _He smiles and pats her cheek again, and for one horrific moment, she lets her hope show in her face, in her eyes. And he starts laughing, and her face drops.

"Oh, are you getting hopeful?? You're _**hilarious**_, Missy, did you know that? I tell you that you're only alive because I _like_ you, and you think that's _good!"_ He turns and strolls towards the door, before pulling a gun and shooting the one fluorescent light in the room, sinking it into blackness. She starts screaming.

"Don't!! Oh god, _please_, don't leave me!! _Please!!_ I'll do anything!! **Don't leave me here!!**" She shrieks, trying to pull out of her bonds, and she finds out that she can't move at all. She continues to scream after him and he stops in the doorway, seeming to think for a moment, before turning around and walking back towards her. She looks so relieved, and smiles up at him slightly as he comes to stand in front of her chair again.

"I knew I'd probably need this."

Michelle watches with a cold pit in her stomach as he pulls out a roll of duct tape, tearing off a piece with his teeth. She starts screaming, "No no no!!" over and over again, trying to lean back in her chair and away from him, and he just smooths the strip of tape over her mouth, muffling her screaming. The Joker seems pleased with this, smiling, before turning around and walking towards the door.

"Now, don't run off anywhere, Missy." She hears him say, with a slight laughing tone to his voice, before he slams the door behind him and the room goes pitch black. She starts shrieking.


	10. News

For the first couple of hours, it's nothing but screaming. Muffled screaming, but still, screaming. Another six or so hours (nobody keeps track) passed and it turns into soft whimpers, sobbing, and then, it becomes silence. It's not like anybody actually checks the room. Michelle is sure that she's going to die in here, alone, in the dark. Alone. She spends all the time alone with her thoughts wondering, 'why me?'. 'Why did it have to be me?'. She pities herself intensely. It's not her fault, and it never was. It was everyone else's fault. It's _still_ everyone else's fault.

She's not so sure that it is anymore. Whose fault can it be, then? It's hers. No, wait, it's not. She didn't have a...choice...yes she did...no...yes...maybe. She picked to go with him at the police department. But she didn't have a _real_ choice. Prison or criminal activity? Of course she's going to pick criminal. Who wants to go to prison?

Michelle is slowly becoming more and more terrified at how much sense the Joker is making to her. It's horrifying. She knows he's insane, whether _he_ believes it or not; of course he's crazy. Normal, sane people don't kill other people. Do they? _Yes they do,_ a voice in her head tells her. _Soldiers do it every day_. **But that doesn't count,** she tries to tell herself. **Who else kills people? Serial killers kill people. They're crazy.**

_Haven't you ever heard of self-defense?_ The voice -she's starting to think it's her common sense- tells her, almost smugly. She knows where this is going, and shakes her head, as if she's trying to throw the voice out of it.

_You killed a man. You're a normal, sane person, and you killed a man with a chunk of concrete._

She tries to convince herself that that's different.** I did it because I had to,** she tells the voice. **He was...going to keep hurting me...**

_He wasn't going to kill you though. He loved you._

**He was insane!**

_He was obsessed. He loved you very much, remember? He told you all those times..._

**Stop it!**

_'Oh Michelle, you're the reason I get up in the morning. I hope we can stay like this forever...'_

**Don't!**

Yes, she's tormenting herself, and yes, she knows how insane it is. **It's the dark,** she tries to tell herself. **The dark makes me crazy. Once I get out of the dark, I'll be normal and sane and happy again.**

_No, you won't._

**I won't?**

_No, Michelle. You know that you're never going to be the same again. Joker, he's changed you. You're going mad._

**No...I'm not...**

_But you're starting to think he makes sense. Life is horrible. The world is just so unfair to good people, isn't it? Don't lie to yourself._

**Well, yeah, but that's diff...different...**

_You always say that, don't you? Even when you're babbling to yourself like a madman, you like to think you're sane. You're going to lose your mind soon enough, you know. Look; you've already got a voice in your head talking to you. That's not the mark of a mentally healthy person._

**I can't help you being here.**

_Yes, yes you can. See, I'm still here, but I'm still you. You know what it means when you have two people in your head, right?_

**No...wait, yeah, but I'm not that crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not.**

_He isn't crazy either. Come on, you know that right now,_** I'm just talking to myself. I am. I'm just talking to myself. I'm going insane.**

She wants to cry again. She's going to lose her mind, and start giggling and licking knives and doing all that crazy shit. She doesn't want to go crazy. She wants to stay sane so she can escape and...and...and do what? And get arrested? And get locked away? And get hunted down by the Joker and get chopped to pieces?

She doesn't want to think about this anymore. She just hangs her head, and closes her eyes (not that it matters, since it's still pitch black either way), and stops talking to herself. She has no idea how long she's been here, but she's so hungry, and her throat is dry, and she can't stop the images behind her eyes of a pitch black basement, and the feel of chains cutting into the skin of her wrists, and a smiling captor stroking her hair and her face, and telling her that he loves her. And then she can only see him turn around after unlocking her chains, sees him reaching for something, and she can remember the concrete chunk cutting up her hand from how tight she holds it, right before she brings it down on the back of his head. And then, she can only imagine all the blood all over the walls, the floor, her hands, herself, and his head a bloody mess, and Michelle summons up the energy to start screaming again.

* * *

How long has it been? Well, Joker guesses that it's been a day or so. He wonders, briefly, if she's gone insane or not, as he walks down the hallway towards her room. There's no noise coming from it. He opens the door, and looks in to see her still in her chair (unsurprising), hanging her head. Her eyes are so red from crying that it looks like they're bleeding.

"Hello, hello." He chimes, strolling towards her. He's in a good mood; just got back from burning a cool billion (hot billion, he should say) and now has a fleet of well-fed guard dogs to boot. He pulls a knife and slices the rope from her, whistling a merry tune, before ripping off the duct tape covering her mouth. She makes no noise when he does, and for a moment, he wonders if she's dead. "Quiet today."

As soon as he unlocks the handcuffs, though, she shoots out of her chair and wraps her arms around his body, buring her face into his chest and sobbing apologies. It's not what he expected; he'd been expecting anger, maybe even her being catatonic, but not...well, this.

"I'm sorry, I won't do it again!" She wails into his chest, and he lays his hands on her shoulders, trying to push her off.

"That's nice." He mutters, pushing, but she tightens her grip and won't let go. This is annoying. "Alright, it's time to let go of me. Down, girl..." He presses the knife against her throat and pushes, and she staggers back with her hand over a superficial cut. She drops back into the bolted-down chair, staring blankly at the floor. Maybe she did go insane. He turns and walks towards the door, whistling at her like a dog, snapping his fingers. He doesn't need to look back to know that she's following. And she's staying silent too; it's kind of eerie, with how often she usually talks, but it's good with him.

"Where are we going?" She finally asks, and he only giggles a bit in response, walking into a familiar room. It's the one she got her rubber mask in, right before they attacked the armored car however long ago it was.

"Sit." He orders, pointing at a flimsy wooden chair, and she obeys. He grabs something off the corner of the table and tosses it to her, and she fumbles it, like always. It's a newspaper. She unfolds the paper and stares at the front page. News about their escape. "Why don't you take a look at the bottom." He suggests, and she does, and instantly pales.

_A note has also been found in an interrogation room from one Michelle King, a woman that was arrested aiding the Joker in his attack on Harvey Dent. It reads that 'I never wanted to help him', 'This is all one huge, horrible mistake', and 'I'm sorry for everything'. It has been discovered that the unnamed woman used as a hostage by the Joker during his attack at a fundraiser fits the description of Ms. King, and an investigation into her whereabouts has been opened, though it is assumed that she is either with the Joker or dead. "We had no idea that she may be a hostage," a police officer wishing to remain anonymous has told us. "She didn't try and tell us that she was kidnapped, or let us know that she was forced against her will. We couldn't have known." A look at the cameras during her interrogation, however, has shown a grevious mistake by the interrogating officer's methods, and that she did, indeed, try to confess being forced against her will to aid the Joker. The cameras also show that she was once again abducted by the Joker, after making a phone call traced to Nathan Anderson, her adoptive brother. He has declined to comment. Only time will tell if Ms. King will be returned safely or not, though our prayers go out to her._

"Wow. I didn't know you liked the limelight."

She drops the newspaper and very hesitantly looks up at him, wondering if he's angry or not. She still can't tell. "I didn't mean for it to...get so out of hand..."

"Of course you didn't. Everyone misses you after you're gone, right?"

She nods, somewhat hesitantly, staring down at the newspaper but not really seeing it as he slides it away from her. "Y...yeah, I guess...sir..." The revelation that people actually believe her story has rocked her to the core, and for a moment, she's hopeful. She hides it, of course, but maybe...if she gets away, she can live...a normal life...

The rolled up newspaper is swatted across her across the face, hard enough to sting.

"Bad girl; trying to sneak around me? Plan an escape?" He scolds her, as she turns her head to look at him again, and she's afraid again. There's a smear of cheap black ink along her cheek. "You think I'm ever letting you _go_?" There's laughter in his voice, derisive laughter that stings her almost as bad as his words. "When I'm tired of you, I'll just...do something **fun**, like strap a bomb to you and shove you into a crowded building. Missy, you're a tool of mine, and I _use_ my tools." He taps the end of the rolled-up newspaper on her nose as he speaks, and she does nothing, because there's always a pitch black room she could go back to. "Understand?"

She's silent. He grabs her by the hair and drags her within an inch of a knife, the point of it hovering near her eye. She cuts in with a yelp of "Yessir" and he tosses her back, the force of it tipping back her chair. It's almost pathetic.

"Well," He claps his hands together, and the mood whiplash is tangible, "Glad we could chat." She watches him walk to the door, remaining splayed across the concrete floor on her back, and sits up slightly after a moment of deliberation. "I could always turn out the light," He suggests, slyly, and laughs when she shoots up to her knees, eyes wide. "Kidding, only kidding. Be ready to do something useful for once, soon." He slams the door, leaving her in a lit room, alone, and though she doesn't hear the door lock, she doesn't really think about it and instead sets the chair upright, before dropping down into it and grabbing the newspaper. No reason not to enjoy what might be the last times she's peaceful (and not about to die), right?

"If I die, oh well. Gotham's a shithole anyway."


	11. Nurses

She straightens her shirt, and then does it again. It's still crooked. She can't help herself and straightens it again. It's still crooked. Michelle's very aware that no matter how much she tries to fix it, it's always going to be crooked.

She still has no idea how long she's been here. Though, really, it's not bothering her all that much anymore. They've started feeding her again (it strikes her that she's using the term 'feeding', like she's some sort of caged animal, and it's kind of appropriate now that she thinks about it); nothing big, just whatever seems to be lying around (leftover fast food is what she mainly gets, and she guesses that whatever they don't eat, they throw to her like a begging dog). She's been hanging around in the same room since the Joker left her there, just waiting. She wishes there were a clock somewhere around here, idly, before returning to what's left of the burger joint soda. It's watery.

"Missy," She hears from the opening door, and rolls around in her seat to look, a mask of apathy on her face. It doesn't last, though, when the Joker walks in wearing a nurse's outfit. "This is on right, right?" The Joker asks her, fidgeting with the outfit, before looking at her face and noticing that she's turning quite ashen. She drops her drink, and doesn't look as it hits the floor. He snaps his fingers, getting her attention again. "Is it?"

"Erm…" She begins, her voice very weak and shaky, putting a hand over her mouth. "No, actually. Do I want to know?"

"Then come help me fix it," He snaps, impatiently, and she walks over somewhat dazedly, her fingers hovering over the outfit but not quite touching it, as she doesn't want to touch him. He taps his heeled foot a couple times, watching her awkwardly almost touching his nurse's outfit but deciding against it at the last moment, before grabbing her wrists and forcing her hands down on his shoulders. "There, you touched me. Now fix it."

"Al…right…" Michelle mumbles, her voice distant, as she starts trying to fix his crooked skirt. It's horribly weird and awkward and she kind of wants to die right now, but not quite enough to refuse to do it and let him kill her in some unspeakably painful manner. "Why…are you wearing a nurse's outfit, exactly?"

"Visiting someone in the hospital. Old friend, actually," He states, as she finishes righting his skirt and glances up at the wig on his head.

"Your wig is crooked."

"I don't walk around in drag very often."

"Surprise surprise," Michelle mutters under her breath as she reaches for his wig, but it's not quiet enough for him not to hear her and he grabs the finger he broke recently and breaks it again. She shrieks, and drops to her knees, before he taps his foot on the ground again, impatiently.

"We've got a schedule to keep, Missy. Tick tock, tick tock," Joker says distractedly, cracking his neck, and Michelle clutches her injured hand to her chest and uses the free one to straighten his wig, tears in her eyes as she does.

"You're fine…" She mumbles, and turns around to sit back in her chair, when he grabs her by the back of her shirt and starts dragging her down the hallway with him.

"Oh no, you're coming too," He states, and there's a distinctive tone of either excitement or impatience, Michelle can't tell which, and she just lets him drag her down the hallway. He stops at a room and shoves her into it roughly. "Change and get out here." He shuts the door as Michelle straightens, looking at the article of clothing on the table.

"Oh no, oh no I'm not wearing that thing, you're insane and I'm not going to argue about it because you're out of your fucking mind if you think I'm going to wear that!" Michelle wheels around towards the door, and when she throws it open to argue some more with him, he's giving her a deadpan stare.

"You have two minutes before I come in and do it myself."

She slams the door shut in his face. She's also out in one and a half, fully dressed. Her arms are crossed over her chest, tightly, and she's glaring at him as harshly as she possibly can, her heels clicking on the concrete as she walks out of the room as pissed as possible. She's wearing a nurse's outfit too, one identical to his, and he nods in approval.

"At least you look like a woman now. Come on," Joker grabs her by the upper arm, pulling her along, and she staggers after him, even angrier than before.

"What do you mean by that??" She shouts, indignation in her tone, but he doesn't answer her and merely drags her out to a van already set up with goons, and shoves her in. She trips and hits the floor of the van as he walks in and steps over her, moving to sit down.

"Clumsy clumsy," He teases, almost playfully, and Michelle just glares at him, before looking back at the goon sitting behind her and looking up her skirt. She snarls at him and he glances away, before she sits up on her knees and straightens out her skirt.

This van ride is the most fucking uncomfortable ride in the history of Gotham, maybe even the world. Michelle is sure of this. She's in a nurse's uniform, and though she's not very pretty (she's rather plain, and she also has no makeup on and hasn't had a shower in a day or maybe two, so that explains some things), she's got nice legs and nice hips. In her opinion, anyway.

On the other side of the van is the Joker, in the same nurse's uniform, and apparently not used to closing his legs when he wears a skirt. Michelle accidentally gets an eyeful and then wishes she had a lighter to melt her eyes out of their sockets, or maybe an ice cream scoop to gouge them out with.

Nobody speaks. There's no need, because…well, what the fuck do you talk about in that sort of situation?

The van eventually (after a long eternity, it feels like) comes to a stop and they climb out, and Michelle recognizes Gotham General. There's a swarm of people panicking and rushing around, school buses being loaded with patients, policemen directing people around.

"Why did you need me to dress like this again?" Michelle asks, confusedly, as he steps out and straightens his skirt again.

"Because you need to _lighten up_. Play some dress-up now and then." Joker smiles at her a moment, almost as if he's trying to be charming, and she very, very nearly starts screaming "THIS IS THE JOKER HE'S RIGHT HERE COME KILL HIM FOR ME" at the top of her lungs, just to spite him. Oh, how close she is. But something tells her not to; it's cowardice, she knows, that not even pure rage can overcome, and she huffs and falls silent.

"Follow them," She hears Joker order her dismissively, as an unmasked goon puts a hand on her shoulder. "And wait for me to come back. Run, or make a scene, and…Oh, I don't need to tell you what'll happen, do I?" He flashes a smile, showing yellowed teeth, and she shivers noticeably. _I'll make you suffer_, his eyes almost seem to say, _I'll make you wish I'd gutted you like a fish_. She shakes her head, and he turns to walk towards the hospital. "Smart girl. Keep it that way."

The unmasked goon shoves her towards a large yellow school bus and she staggers, before straightening herself and looking as close to a strung-out nurse as possible. Michelle still has absolutely no idea why everyone is rushing around, or what's happening, but she'll probably learn soon enough and so just goes with it, letting the man lead her to a large yellow school bus and having her walk up into it. She walks to the back, down the alley of the sick and injured, ignoring the patients grabbing at her and trying to get the attention of the 'nurse', and sitting down in the very back. She watches out the window as the flow of people in and out of Gotham General slows to a trickle, before the building explodes for some reason or another. The explosion rocks the bus, and Michelle almost tips out of her seat, before a lone nurse walks away from the exploding building and into the bus she's sitting in. It's not too hard to guess who it is.

She looks to all the people on the bus and, for a fleeting moment, feels crushing pity for these poor people. The news team taking their seats, the patients, everyone here other than the redheaded nurse and the goons now standing up in the aisles as the bus pulls out of the lineup and onto another street.

"Welcome, welcome," the Joker greets them all as he pulls off his wig, and everyone instantly panics. Except Michelle, of course, but that's because she was expecting this. The goons standing behind Joker pull weapons and hold them in view, menacingly. "To our little party. You all, lucky dogs you are, are going to be helping us play our _reindeer games_." His tone drops from the false enthusiasm (is it even false at all? He might actually be happy about this) to his normal, serious one. "Anyone plays hero and we drop the women and children. So sit tight and _enjoy_ the ride."

People are crying and muttering "This isn't happening" as the Joker walks merrily to the back of the bus and shoves Michelle, sitting next to her. "Enjoying yourself, Missy?" He asks, as she flattens herself against the window and doesn't make eye contact.

"Oh, I'm having a blast." She speaks in monotone, and he claps her on the shoulder.

"Good to hear. Michelle, do you like the Batman?" He asks her, and she does look at him now, suspiciously, shrinking away from the hand on her shoulder.

"I kind of prefer that Superman they've got in Metropolis, myself," She mumbles, and he cracks into high-pitched laughter that makes her shudder and everyone else in the bus jump.

"Oh, _you_." He gives her a shove, and it's hard enough to make her crack her head against the glass of the window, though he doesn't seem to notice. "No, really."

"I…guess?" Michelle rubs her head where it hit the glass, now for the first time noticing how puffy her (twice) broken finger looks against the rest of her hand. The Joker puts an arm around her shoulders, dragging her against his side and smiling in her face (it's still just as terrifying as the first time he grabbed a hold of her).

"Good, good! Would you like to _meet_ him?"


	12. Rescues

She can't believe it. She absolutely can't believe that this is happening right now.

"We're going to be late if you keep dragging your _feet_," Joker mutters, as he drags Michelle by the upper arm through the building. They're using the hostages as makeshift clowns, and the heartless bastards are setting them up right in front of the window. It's going to be a slaughterhouse. She's still in her nurse's uniform, cool night air nipping at her bare legs as they head through the maze-like building. She thinks of what he's going to be late for; what could he possibly be late for?

"You always hurry, you know that?" She, for some ungodly reason, tells him, and he glances sideways at her, confused.

"What?"

"You do. You're always late for something." She's so strung out from all the stress and the danger and the abuse that in this very moment, she's almost serene, and it's creepy. He continues dragging her, looking back ahead of him.

"I'm a busy man, after all." He strolls into an office and tosses her to the floor in the center of the room, and she just sort of sits there, with a lack of anything else to do. Not long after that, Joker whistles, and a couple goons dressed as doctors lead in a pack of snapping dogs. They come to crowd around the Joker's feet as the 'doctors' leave, and he offhandedly kicks one aside while pacing around the room. He pulls out a cell phone, and begins to narrate a plan to…somebody. Michelle has no idea who. It sounds like a highly unpleasant plan, a _game_ as he would probably call it, and she's glad she's not _them_. At least, until she remembers that she's _here_ instead.

Oh well, at least she's not them. At least she's kind of used to being around Gotham's premiere clown-themed terrorist.

She watches him hang up the phone and dial another number, and she has no idea who he's talking to now. He walks over and grabs her by the hair, dragging her to her feet.

"Right now, I have the broken bird of Gotham here with me. Say hello, Michelle," Joker tells her, and gives a hard jerk on her hair, causing her to yell in pain. "She says hi. Anyhow, if SWAT so much as puts a toe inside the building, then she takes a swan dive off a skyscraper. She's going to be very unhappy if that happens, I'm sure." He snaps the phone shut, Michelle staring off at the floor as he lets go of her hair and lets her sit there, numbly, amongst the growling Rottweilers.

"Who was that?" She asks, dumbly, as he begins to pace again.

"Your brother." He tells her, agitated, as she sits there on the floor. After a moment, there's commotion downstairs, and he grabs her by the upper arm again, dragging her to her feet in a grip so tight that it'll definitely leave bruises. Michelle can tell that he's very excited, agitated; he's waiting for something, and she has an inkling of what. "Look alive now," He smacks her cheek a couple times, not enough to qualify as a slap but enough to sting in his attempt to make her look more aware. "You **do** need to look like a convincing hostage."

"But I _am_ a hostage," She states, and he laughs in a sharp, cutting way.

"You're not a very _convincing_ one." Joker tells her, and, after thinking a moment, walks over to the wall and slams her head into it. She crumples to the ground. "Now that I think about it, you'll just get in the way. Stay there and I wouldn't try running." He pats the head of one of the dogs, as a wordless warning. She doesn't move, just watches dizzily from her spot on the floor as he turns, looking at someone in the doorway.

"You came. I'm touched." Michelle notes that, for being cornered by Batman, he sounds happy. She hears something about a detonator, but it's kind of muffled by the noise the dogs make as they leap onto Batman. She sits up against the wall, hand over her head, and watches them fight. She hasn't actually seen the Joker really fight somebody before, and now that she does, one thing comes to her mind.

_He fights dirty._

It's all she can come up with as he pummels Batman, kicking him towards the glass. He knocks him out the window and after another moment, kicks out a wooden support beam and nearly crushes the Batman's neck with a pipe, stepping on it.

A very crazy, very suicidal idea comes to her mind. She runs with it, because she's stopped caring about what might happen, what he could do to her. She just acts.

She charges at Joker, aiming to shove him out the window or at least distract him enough for Batman to get the upper hand; she thinks he can't see her, is too busy with his prisoner to notice her coming behind him.

She's wrong, and she realizes this as he turns and smiles at her, crazed, and brings his switchblade down in a slashing arc across her face.

**_"I'm busy." _**He growls in a low, guttural tone, and she realizes that he's not smiling, he's snarling at her. Her hand is over her wounded face, blood seeping between her fingers, and she looks down at his boot just in time to see a blade click out of it, before he flat-out roundhouses her. She can feel the blade slice into her chest and the concussive force of the blow knocks the air out of her, and she gets knocked back a few feet and drops to the floor. The free hand comes to cover her new stab wound, red already soaking into (and staining) her white nurses' uniform.

_Oh god, this is how I die. _She thinks, dimly, as she watches the two of them out near the ledge. _This isn't how it was supposed to happen._

She sees motion again, though her vision is blurring; she can hear better, and catches snippets of conversation.

"You're alone." She hears a low, growling voice, and for a moment, wonders if Batman gargles with razorblades.

"Oh, but I'm not. Just ask Michelle." She hears the Joker say, before muttering about having to do everything yourself. There's a flurry of motion not too much later, and Michelle watches Joker sail over the side of the building, before being dragged back into view, hanging upside-down. He looks happy hanging off the side of a skyscraper, caught. The two men talk for a moment, Michelle hearing the Joker offer to share a padded room with Batman, and she closes her eyes, sure that she's going to die now. She does roll onto her back, though, to get more comfortable as she dies, and when she hears someone walking past, she opens her good eye to see Batman glancing down at her.

"Hey," She says, smiling wryly. "Michelle King. Joker said he'd introduce us."

He doesn't say anything to her and instead hurries out of sight, and it's just her and the Joker, alone. After a long moment of silence, she hears him talk, as if he hadn't just maybe fatally stabbed her and slashed her face.

"So...no hard feelings, right?" His voice is almost grinning from how happy he sounds, and she opens her good eye so that she can roll it at him.

"Oh _fuck_ you, man."

He giggles slightly, hanging upside down and seeming to swim in the air. She stares at him a moment longer, and then can't help but ask.

"You're not worried in the least about being locked up in Arkham, are you?" She deadpans her question, and catches sight of him looking at her again.

"Of course not; a change of scenery does a man good. You should join me. I hear the food is good."

"There's not going to be room if you, me, and Batman all share a padded cell."

She hears him genuinely laugh now, and it's still as chilling as ever, though the terror is somewhat dulled by the fact that she's bleeding to death. "I think I'm rubbing off on you, Harley."

She glares at him from the corner of her eye. "What happened to Missy? And lord, I hope not." She can hear people shouting, moving up towards them, and knows that SWAT is coming soon. Joker just hangs there, watching her and the door, alternating between one and the other.

"Harley rolls off the tongue better. And don't worry; soon enough, you'll see things my way. I promise you that, and believe me, I **am** a man of my word."

That's about the last thing she hears from him as the SWAT moves in and towards the two of them, and she allows herself to black out.

* * *

The next time she wakes up, everything is white.

_It's a hospital_, she realizes from surveying the abnormally clean white surfaces, and the smell of antiseptic and sanitation. _Why am I not dead? I should've…what the hell?_ She lays a hand over the left side of her face, and feels bandages where she was slashed. She's alone in here, just her and her IV. A few minutes later someone walks in and checks her chart, before noticing that she's awake.

"Oh, you're awake."

Well, _that_ was helpful.

"Yeah." Michelle answers, staring. She can hear a buzz outside the door, people talking, and before she can react, there are reporters swarming her room. They're all talking at once, asking her questions, about this, about that, about her time in captivity, about what it was like to be a prisoner of the Joker. The nurse chases them all out, turning to her again. Every time she turns away, Michelle expects the Joker to turn back around, laugh, and say, "Just kidding." This nurse having the same red hair doesn't help calm her down, either.

"Ms. King, wait just a moment." The nurse begins, and before Michelle can ask any questions, the nurse leaves and a doctor walks in a few minutes after. He sits down in the chair by her bedside and stares, before talking to her like she's five. It pisses her off.

"Hello, Michelle. How are you feeling?" He asks, still speaking to her like she's a child, and she glares at him and deadpans her answer.

"Like I've been cut up by a homicidal clown."

"…Oh." The doctor mutters, not sure how to come back from that one. He reads her clipboard again, clears his throat, and starts. "Well…you've been asleep for fourteen hours…malnourished, dehydrated…" He mumbles, and she's still glaring.

"I know. What's the damage?"

"I don't think that it would be…_prudent_, to discuss-"

"I think it would. What's. The. Damage." She stops after every word, making sure that he knows that she thinks he's a jackass. He glances at the board again and then speaks.

"Well, you were slashed from right here," He taps above his left eyebrow, about an inch, inch and a half, "Down to here." He slides his finger down from that spot to his cheekbone. "No damage to the eye, thankfully, but…it's a nasty wound. It's going to scar pretty badly." She listens closely, and he goes on. "One of your fingers was broken in two places. We set it, but the first break had already started to heal itself and so your finger might be a bit crooked, but that's not really the most important one. You've got a deep gash in your stomach, right along your bottom ribs. It nicked them, and cut in between the last two sets of ribs from the slashing motion."

Michelle stares at him a moment. "Am I going to live?"

"Yes. We had to stitch you up, and you're going to have to take things easy for a while, but you're going to survive." He smiles at her, reassuringly, and she glances to the door past him. He seems to grimace when he follows her line of sight. "Yes…you have visitors. But I don't think that it would be good for your health to get all that excitement right now." Michelle nods, in agreement, before laying back in her bed.

"Thanks, doc." She wants to go back to sleep, before hearing the doctor stand.

"Oh yes, and when you feel up to it, your brother wants to talk with you."

"Tell him to fuck off." Michelle growls, and the doctor seems to awkwardly shuffle out of the room (there's another blast of noise from reporters as the door opens and closes), and she stares at the ceiling.

"It's over." She states, to the ceiling and to herself. She can't convince herself that it really is over, for some reason, but she's sure that it'll hit her over time. She can go and live a normal life now.

Alone.

In the gutter.

With no job.

And possibly about to be arrested by the police.

She, for a moment, does think about what the Joker told her. About the world and all its random injustice and all that. Maybe he's right about that, at least, even if he's insane. She lets herself slip into a light sleep, contented with the idea of dealing with all her problems later on.


	13. Interviews

She spends a month in the hospital before they release her, and she tries to leave in secret so the paparazzi don't ambush her. It doesn't quite work.

"Ms. King! A moment, please?"

"We have a few questions, Ms. King!"

"How was your imprisonment?"

"Did you personally meet the Joker?"

"Have you been assaulted?"

She's pinned against the building by the microphones shoved in her face, a bottle of painkillers in her hand. Someone grabs her by the wrist and pulls her out, through the reporters, and crushes her against their left side.

"She's not answering questions at the moment! Now, if you'd like to make a personal appointment…"

Michelle looks up at James, and she rears back and socks him right in the eye. The reporters go wild. "You asshole, don't try and act all goody-goody with me! You're the one that shoved me at him at the party and got me kidnapped in the first place!" She shouts, before stomping off down the street. Reporters are letting out a barrage of questions for James now, asking if it's true, if she's lying, and he ignores them and runs after her, hand on her shoulder. He wants to break her nose for that punch, but he's going to restrain himself. Right now, anyway.

"Michelle, your memory is fuzzy. You tripped. I tried to grab you, but…well, you can't expect me to try and fight off that psycho?" He tells her, hands on her shoulders, and though she shrugs his hands off of her body, he knows that she's confused. She doubts her memory. She's playing right into his hands again; she's so easy to play.

"Don't touch me. I've got a gutter to sleep in tonight," She snaps at him, before he wheels her around towards a limo. "I'm not staying with you, so you can just shove that up your-"

"It's not mine, it's Nathan's." He cuts her off, exasperated, and shoves her towards the limo. After a moment of hesitancy, she gets in (if only to escape the buzzing paparazzi) and he gets in too, and though as the car starts he tries to talk to her, to reconcile, to warp her memories so that she believes his story about her tripping again, she ignores him the entire time. When they arrive at Nathan's penthouse she doesn't wait for him and goes up the elevator first and not bothering to hold the door for him, and she smiles crookedly as the doors shut in his face and the elevator starts. It doesn't take long for her to reach the right floor, and she gets off. As the elevator rises again (this time with James on it) and as the doors are almost at the top, she hits the emergency brake and smirks, turning around and walking inside.

That bastard can wait in the elevator.

She walks in and sees Nathan sitting down on his nice couch (it's a very long couch), sprawled along it like some sort of lion, and he glances to her without a smile. Now that they're alone, they don't need to keep up appearances.

"Nathan." Michelle says his name in monotone, and she notices that he's staring at the left side of her face. The doctor wasn't lying when he said the scar was going to be bad; it's very noticeable, and dark against the pale tone of her skin. He gestures towards a chair near the head of his couch and she sits, staring blankly ahead of her. "What do you want me here for? You disowned me, remember?"

"Not…quite." He starts, sitting up and reaching towards an end table at the head of his couch and to Michelle's left, his fingers closing around a glass of what looks like scotch or brandy. It's only two or three in the afternoon. "I can't ostensibly disown you when you're so very popular."

She cocks her head, confused, and Nathan hands her a newspaper (everyone has a newspaper for her nowadays, it seems), and she scans the front page. It's a huge article about the Joker being captured and Batman killing people, which sounds a little crazy but whatever. On the second page, there's an article about her. It's got her picture, one from before she was captured and one someone snuck while she was in her hospital bed, staring blankly at the camera, bandaged to hell. The article itself is nothing but chattering about how she was rescued by SWAT (that's not true, not really, since Batman actually did it, but whatever) bleeding heavily, and how she was in the Joker's clutches for a month (only a month? It felt like so much longer) and somehow survived, and how she was blah blah blah blah. It's boring things that she knows already.

"So?" She asks Nathan, setting the paper back down. "So I've got a little bit of a spotlight right now. Doesn't mean I like it. I'm not exactly front page news, am I? I'll fade away soon enough."

"People think you're inspiring," Nathan deadpans, before sipping his unidentified drink. "They need some sort of a heroic figure right now, and you're the default."

"What about Batman? He's more heroic than I am."

"He's killed people. Nobody trusts him anymore."

"I do, though you probably don't care. Anyway, what about Harvey Dent? They did find him again, didn't they?"

Nathan looks at her like she's stupid. "You've really been out of touch with the news, haven't you? He's dead. The Batman killed him."

Michelle settles her face in her hands, and when she speaks, her words are muffled. She's offhandedly rubbing the scar along the left side of her face with her thumb. "And this is preventing you from disowning me _how_?" She really needs to leave if she's going to try and find somewhere to sleep before nightfall. Nathan sets down his mystery drink and steeples his fingers as he stares at her.

"If I throw you out on the street, I'm automatically the hugest bastard in the entire world. You're not going to be popular for very long, of course; new people will become heroic in Gotham's eyes, you'll fade into the city backdrop again, and people will forget you. But right now, you're important, to some extent. And so," He stares at her as she glances up between her fingers. "I'm offering you an apartment; nicer than the last one, of course, and I'll pay for all your expenses. That way, you get taken care of and I don't look like some sort of monster."

"But you _are_ a monster."

"Yes, but I don't want to _look_ like one." He smiles slightly, but it's humorless and Michelle nods to him.

"Fine; you've got a deal, Nathan."

"Wonderful. Oh yes, and you'll have to deal with the paparazzi wanting interviews."

"Why?" She asks, standing up again, and he doesn't move from his seat on the couch.

"Because if you don't, then they won't leave. I had enough trouble getting them to leave me alone when you left that adorable little note at Gotham PD." He does stand now, as she walks towards the elevator door, hitting the button for it to rise again. "What are you doing?"

"Letting James out of the elevator."

The elevator finally moves again and James glares at her as the doors open. She smirks at him again, before giving him a shove so that he hits the back of the elevator and then reaching around inside the elevator to hit the button with the down arrow. The elevator doors slide shut again as he rushes towards the doors and then the elevator sinks into the floor. Michelle is finding out that being a total bitch to him is a lot of fun.

"You're staying in the guest room here," Nathan tells her, and he's either amused or exasperated, from the sound of his voice. "It's in back." Michelle turns around, following him down the hallway, as he explains to her where the room is and how she's welcome to the kitchen.

* * *

The next afternoon, she's sitting in an interview room under harsh lights, answering what questions she can. She doesn't know which newspaper this is for, because Nathan set up the interviews for her, but the interviewer is rather intrusive with her questions.

"So, Ms. King," The interviewer begins, preparing to write, "What was it like?"

Michelle blinks in the harsh lights. "What was…what like?"

"What was it like to be imprisoned by the infamous Joker for an entire month?" The woman rolls her eyes, as if this was obvious, and Michelle glares but keeps her tone natural.

"It was…boring."

Yes, this is all she can come up with. Not 'terrifying', not 'harrowing', not even 'insane'. The interviewer just stares at her a moment, disbelieving. "Boring, you say?"

"Well…yeah. Yes, I mean. Most of the time I spent sitting in a concrete room, just…waiting for something to happen. Most of the time. He did take me out of there sometimes to, um, help out."

"What did you help him do?"

"Well...I think I helped attack an armored car with Harvey Dent in it. It was horrible."

"Yes, we know you were involved with that." The woman says impatiently, tapping her foot. "What else?"

"I watched Gotham General implode." Michelle deadpans, glaring at the woman. She already doesn't like her. "And the Joker had me help him put on his nurse's uniform. Is that _interesting_ enough?" The interviewer blinks, not expecting that, and scribbles something down.

"Let's talk about your interaction with the Joker himself. SWAT team members have said that when they found you, the two of you were chatting almost pleasantly. Do you have any explanation for that?" She's worded it like Michelle had to defend herself against it, and she crosses her arms.

"I was in the middle of bleeding out on the floor, and he was hanging in midair, and we were alone. What else are we going to do but talk? Anyway," She adds, annoyed, "You can only spend so much time around someone before-"

"Before you begin to sympathize with them?"

"No, no! I **don't** sympathize with him. I was _going_ to say," Michelle fights the urge to just walk out of this place, "Before you learn what to say and what not to say."

"So you do _not_ sympathize with him?"

"Of course not." Michelle snaps, crossing one leg over the other and uncrossing her arms, then crossing them again. She wants this interview over with, and she wonders if Nathan scheduled any more of them.

"And the two of you- you and Joker, I mean –have absolutely no relationship other than captor and captive?"

"_What?!_ Of **course** not!"

"That's funny," The interviewing woman says while digging in her purse, "Because he likes to mention you." She pulls out a paper, reading off of it while Michelle sits there, slack-jawed. "He has asked more than once about your well-being, and commented that he finds you humorous; he also refers to you as 'Harley'. Do you have any comment, Ms. King?"

"No." Michelle growls, her hand over her face, thinking _that bastard that bastard that bastard_ over and over again, like some sort of mad mantra. "No, I don't. Can we finish this soon?"

"One last question. Have you been through a psychological evaluation since your release, to check for the possibility of Stockholm syndrome? Ms. King?" The interviewer watches Michelle stand up and stomp out the door. Michelle, meanwhile, is indignated. They're not even listening to her side of the story; they're accusing her of…oh, it makes her so _mad_. She's not even the victim anymore, like she should be; she's just as guilty to some people as the Joker is. Not even mentioning how the Joker is still fucking with her head, even though he's safely locked up by now. For a moment, Michelle wonders if they let him keep his makeup on and decides they probably don't, and then she tries to imagine him without it on. It doesn't work, and as she stomps out to the rented car and slides in the driver's seat, she pushes it aside and thinks about different things. Like the news interview she has in ten minutes.

She leans forward and thumps her forehead against the steering wheel, and jumps when she hits the horn.

* * *

The news interview goes much easier than the newspaper interview; they just ask her about what happened and how she feels, not going as rude as the newspaper interviewer did. She was a little insulted when they put makeup over her scar to make it look less 'noticeable' as they called it (they meant grotesque), and very insulted when a man came in, saw them trying to hide her scar, and then stopped them while saying, "No, no, don't do that; let it be really noticeable! It'll cause more viewer reaction, and they'll keep watching."

The news interview is nothing but mundane, expected questions: 'What happened in that month timeframe', 'what injuries did you sustain from him', 'what was it like being trapped by the infamous Joker', the things you'd expect. It's almost a pleasant experience to not feel like she's stuck in an Inquisition. Kind of.

She goes home (Nathan's penthouse, her temporary residence for now) and takes a very hot bath, and wonders about it all. What is she going to do? What can she possibly do now?

Life outside, life free of the Joker, isn't what she had expected. Or maybe it's the exact same, and she's just got a new viewpoint.


	14. Escapes

How long has it been since she was rotting in a concrete room? Michelle can't quite remember.

She went to the Joker's trial to give testimony, not that she was actually needed to win the trial. The vote was unanimous anyway; he's going to rot in a padded cell in Arkham for life. She did see him without the makeup, which was the only reason she came in the first place, more or less. It was almost insane to see him without the red gash of a smile and the black raccoon eyes, though his hair was still dirty green; he didn't look any more human, though. And for the love of dear god, he saw her and waved. She turned ashen. He laughed.

"Nice scar," He tells her as she gets off the stand and walks past his table, and she looks at him with her face as white as paper. "They're fun, aren't they?" She keeps walking while he laughs and the judge tells him to quiet down, Michelle sitting down again in back and closing her eyes.

It's been a month or two since he was sent to Arkham. Gotham is quieting down again, recovering from the terror. Michelle has her apartment and her own car now, and she still gets stopped on the street by citizens asking her about her time with the Joker. She's interesting to them, Nathan tells her, but Michelle doesn't buy that.

She's like a leper. Someone you want to watch for the pure bile fascination of it, someone you're interested in for a little while for the entertainment, but ultimately someone that you're going to abandon and forget about soon enough. Someone you kind of have interest in, someone that you pity more than anything else, but someone that you don't want to have around you for extended periods of time. She's different from them, and the scar along her face is the gold paper Star of David that proves it.

But that's just how she sees it. Maybe there's something wrong with her.

The police interviewed her too, before the trial even started; they asked her what he did to her, and she told them in gruesome detail; slashing her across the face with a switchblade, gouging her with the blade in his shoe, breaking her fingers, punching her, dragging her around by her hair, the normal things. She's very emotionless as she outlines her time in captivity, her voice a cool, calm monotone. They ask if he raped her, and she tells them, in no uncertain terms, that she doesn't even think he has any interest in women. That gets their attention, and they ask why she thinks that. She says that he never so much as gave a second look when she was in the same skimpy nurses' uniform that he was, and they quit asking about it.

They put her through a test to see if she has Stockholm syndrome or any other psychological problems as a result of her imprisonment. She doesn't seem to sympathize with the Joker or his men, but she doesn't show any anger towards them or even blame them. She doesn't even seem like she's really…there. She's distant, doesn't pay attention, and stares off at nothingness. She tells them that she's unhappy with her life; the world seems cold, thankless. They tell her that she might be depressed, and to see a psychologist. Nathan has been sending her to one ever since she got back. The therapy isn't working at all. They send her on her way.

Michelle's viewpoint has definitely been changed.

Ignorance was bliss. She could walk among all the plebes and could turn away from the grimier parts of Gotham and the people living in it, because she was rich and could afford to look away; her life was very slow, a calm current of work, work, dating for dinner, parties, work, work. It was easy then. But now, something is different. She can't help but see, but balk at the fact that though they all ignored her when she was just another person, and reviled her when she needed them the most, when she was rotting in a jail cell next to the Joker. Can't forget how Nathan disowned her over the phone because she would damage his reputation. But now that she's (in)famous, she's got so many more friends; people talk to her with smiles, ask her about herself and what it was like being a captive of the Joker (she's so sick of that question), invite her to ritzy parties.

It's fashionable to be friends with Michelle King. That's the only reason they don't revile her anymore; because she's the next classy thing to have at your party. She's a wonderful decoration.

Michelle can't help but see people for what they are now. She sees how superficial they are, how they only care for themselves, how they're just pigs operating off of jealousy and lust. Even Nathan only keeps her around so that he can still look like a kind, caring man. She's cynical now, trusts nobody; she's got a gun in her purse because everybody is suspect, she can't trust any of them.

It's a horrible life made up of seeing all of the bad, all of the horror, all of the tragedy, and being unable to enjoy any of the light.

Nobody tries to help her. She can't rely on the shrink to help her, because no matter how much she tells him about how dark the world is, how horrible and cruel and unfair life seems to her now, he says that it will pass. _It will pass, it will pass, why don't you go see a **clown**? _She howls in laughter at that suggestion, before the therapist realizes what he's said and apologizes profusely, trying to smooth it over. She leaves. Giggling.

Where's the adrenaline? There's no point in living if you can't feel alive, and Michelle might as well be in a coma from how alive she feels. Where's the point in it all anymore? Things are so…boring. She gets up, walks down to the large bookstore where she works now (the small, quiet one closed down while she was gone) and spends hours rushing around, getting asked that same damnable question (what was it like? What was it like?) fifty times a day, gets so many pitying stares from passersby that stare at her scar, goes home, takes a shower, and goes to bed.

There's no point in anything anymore.

* * *

And then one morning, there is.

She gets up at six AM sharp, and turns on the TV to the news. She does this so that she can hear the weather as she gets ready for work. But now, there's something else on the news, and it's something that almost everyone in Gotham is watching at this moment.

He escaped. Somehow, through the help of God or Satan, pick your poison, the Joker escaped Arkham Asylum.

Widespread panic. The news anchors are having panic attacks. Police are buzzing around like angry wasps, trying to find him before he can disappear again. Michelle is glued to the TV, watching with rapt attention. The police can't find him anywhere around Arkham, though they've found his abandoned jumpsuit near a cache of what appears to be supplies set up just in case he was ever caught, probably civilian clothes and some money. He's gone.

Michelle knows that she's probably near the top of his 'To Visit' list, maybe under Batman, and she knows she's in horrible danger. She's in the damn phone book, for Christ sakes. It's only a matter of time until he tracks her down and maybe guts her for testifying against him, or does that 'strap-a-bomb-to-you' thing he was talking about that one time.

After a moment of pondering what to do, Michelle switches off the TV, grabs her keys, and heads out to her car to go to work.

What else can she really do but hang onto the tattered remains of her normal, sane life?


	15. Surprises

The city is in an uproar.

Michelle gets stared at more often nowadays, because they know that she's got history with the psychopath roaming the city once again. She's dangerous to be around. They stop talking to her; stop inviting her to their ritzy parties, stop pretending that they're her friends. She's got a virtual shadow of death looming over her, bony claws dug into her shoulders and glimmering obsidian eyes ringed with black glinting, laughing.

They all distance themselves from her once again. James has a new girlfriend, a pretty model, and they ignore one another now. Nathan has cut contact again, but still pays for her expenses. All her new friends are gone. Michelle's an island once more. She gets a pet to fill the space opened up by the lack of people willing to talk to her; a Rottweiler, a huge, drooling monster of a dog that she names Donovan, and another huge, drooling guard dog of the same breed that she names Bruno. Nathan picks up the considerable bill, deciding that a couple guard dogs couldn't hurt.

Michelle spends her days waiting, mostly. She's waiting for something to happen. She's mainly waiting to be shot dead while walking home one day, if one is completely truthful. Bruno and Donovan lie around her home and eat whatever Michelle tosses them, which happens to be a lot since she's a total sucker for those dogs. Oh, and they bark at the door a lot, and anyone who even comes within five feet of the door is met with a pair of snarling, foaming dogs wearing imposing chain collars and baring every single bone white tooth in their heads. The mail man just abandons the mail around five feet away from her door instead of risking getting too close and getting mauled.

Days pass. Nothing happens, and Michelle begins to think that he's forgotten about her. She's paranoid about being grabbed and gutted like a fish; the numbness that had pervaded the entire situation has faded away, and now she's terrified again. She barely leaves the house, and never for more than a few minutes; she takes a week off from work to do this, and give no one any chance to get any chance at her. Unless they want to tangle with her huge guard dogs, of course. A week passes without incident; Bruno and Donovan bark at nothing but birds and squirrels (they catch and eat a cat alive, tearing it to shreds across her living room floor, too), and she's becoming laxer in her paranoia.

Then, one day as she pulls into the parking lot in front of the bookstore she works at, she sees that there's a crowd around something. She's just finished her two hour commute to work (terribly inconvenient, but it's still a bookstore that'll hire her) and wants a cup of coffee before she starts rearranging books and getting stared at. She's on her way to work and nudges through the crowd (people start moving as soon as they see her, and that's a very bad sign) to see what the commotion is about and freezes as she sees it.

_Miss me? _Is written in either red paint or blood on the side of the building, and she instantaneously feels sick. She was wrong. He's coming back for her, and he's going to drive her insane with paranoia and terror before he does it. Police arrive. The day of work is cancelled for everyone while they search for bombs or any other potentially hazardous things he might've hidden in there at some point in time. Michelle goes straight to a bar, orders a beer, and she drinks as much as she dares. It's about six PM when she leaves the bar (having passed out on the counter for an hour or two before someone noticed and woke her up), and answers her cell phone as it rings.

"Hullo?" She answers, her voice slurring slightly.

"Michelle?" She hears a familiar voice on the other end of the line, and blinks. She can't recall the name of whoever it is right now, but it's one of the few friends she has; a nice cop.

"Hey, uh…police officer! Wassap?"

"Are you…it doesn't matter. We want to put you in the Witness Protection Program, until the Joker is caught again; you're in danger being out and unguarded."

"Whass 'at? Witness Protection Program? Why'd we wanna do 'at?" She leans against the wall of the building, staring up at the sky blankly.

"Are you drunk?"

"Kinda."

"…Alright…and I already told you; you're unprotected. Just come to the station and we'll talk about it. Wait, can you even drive?"

"Prolly not."

"Where are you? I'll come pick you up."

"'M at...uh…a bar."

"Where is this bar?"

"…It's near a sidewalk."

"And?"

"And…uh, there's a…tree…over there…"

The cop on the other end of the line groans in frustration, and Michelle offhandedly knocks the side of her shoe on the building. She spends a moment to marvel at how ugly her shoes are, before she begins talking to try and help out.

"Listen…I think I can just walk home…I was on my way back when I stopped anyway…probably only a block or two…" Michelle mumbles, trying to shake free of the haze in her mind. She's not wasted, just a little tipsy, and her speech is slurred a tiny bit, but she's still pretty sharp. Except for being unable to figure out where she is, that is. The cop starts talking, alarmed, at her suggestion.

"No, wait Michelle! Don't, it's too dangerous-"He begins, before Michelle claps the cell phone shut and shoves it in her pocket, making sure her car is locked up and then walking home. Her purse is still on her shoulder, along with the pistol concealed within, so she's not worried (plus she's also kind of drunk, so she's not worried anyway). She walks down the street and comes up to her apartment, and stops about five feet from the door. There's a handful of what appears to be hamburger in little chunks at the front door, and as she walks forward to examine it, sees the glint of light off of it. When she looks closer, she pulls out a shard of something and recognizes what it is.

"Is this…glass?"

From under the closed door, she can see a red smear on the door mat, the dark red liquid soaking into the mat. From inside, she thinks she can hear…music, too. The haze in her mind is almost gone now; she's snapped back to coherency at the sight of the disquieting smear. It doesn't stop her from neglecting to do the most intelligent thing and call the police; she's still lacking in common sense enough to pull the gun from her purse and creep towards the door, throwing it open and staring inside. She follows the red trail across her carpet, slowly; now and then noticing a larger red stain on the carpet here and there, like something was…bleeding…

It hits her now that Donovan and Bruno are silent and nowhere to be seen. They should be jumping on her right now, looking forward to what she's brought them. She whistles, nervously, for them. "Bruno? D…Donovan? C'm…C'mere…_boys_…" The last word is so hoarse as to be nearly silent, as she continues on a very stupid search for her dogs instead of turning around and running screaming. Curiosity isn't letting her go. She thinks she can hear the music coming from the stereo in her living room, and is chilled at what she hears playing. _Strawberry Fields Forever_ floats through the air, a song off of one of her mix CDs, and it sets a disquieting mood of calm music against one of the most terrifying moments of Michelle's life.

There's whining coming from the living room, and Michelle very slowly, shakily, walks into the living room and looks around, her gun pulled. There's nothing amiss (other than the red smears and puddles on her white carpet), at first glance at least. Then she hears a wet gurgling noise and follows thick blood smears leading to and going under the couch. Hesitantly, she gets down on her hands and knees, and looks under the couch.

Bruno is there, curled up in the corner, vomiting blood and hamburger and glass and teeth. Someone's kicked him in the mouth and knocked out all his teeth, and his eyes are gone. He whimpers, pitifully, before gurgling more thick blood onto the carpet. Michelle, completely blank and unable to respond, stares at him a moment longer, before she calls the dog over quietly.

"Come on, Broo. C…C'mere…" Her eyes are tearing up, and as the dog practically drags itself towards her (his back legs are smashed as well) and hides his head into her chest. She strokes his head, whispering comforting things to the dog, before pressing the barrel of her pistol against his head and firing. He goes limp and quits making noise, as blood splashes up across Michelle's front and across her face. She pulls the dog out from under the couch and presses the body against her chest, closing her eyes tightly and crying.

After a minute or two (or maybe an hour, she can't tell time anymore), she lets go of the body and stands up, shaking. She's staring after the blood trail leading into the bathroom, and the cracked door. She follows the red smear to the bathroom, swaying as she walks (though it's not from drunkenness), where deep crimson is pooling on the linoleum. The door is cracked enough for her to see the puddle, but not what's in the room itself, and without even thinking about it really, she reaches forward and pushes the door open.

**_Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?_**

The message is scribed in blood on her bathroom mirror, and in the shower is Donovan's body, bisected, hung from the shower head by tied together socks. _Rainbow striped socks_. There's no doubt of whose work it is; few others in Gotham have a sense of humor so sick. Michelle dumbly walks into the bathroom, staring at Donovan's body (the organs have slumped out of the corpse and are resting in her bathtub), before she turns to look in the mirror again. Her makeup is running down her cheeks, her face and clothes are stained in blood, and _dear fucking God_ _he's right behind her_, smiling very courteously at her reflection. She whirls around; screaming and pulling her gun up to try and shoot him, before she's clubbed in the temple with something very heavy. Her vision instantly fuzzes; she sees double, no, triple of the Joker as her knees go weak and she slumps against him, and he laughs in her ear while tossing aside a Lil' Slugger baseball bat.

"Wow; good to see you _too_, Michelle." He chimes, tossing her over his shoulder and calmly strolling out of the apartment with the incapacitated woman slumped against him, whistling loudly in the night silence. A white van (it's always a white van, he suddenly realizes, and wonders why he always picks white vans) pulls around the corner and the back doors come open, Joker tossing Michelle on the floor of the van and climbing in himself.

"Never liked the parade at the end of that song," He muses, as the doors are slammed shut and the van starts moving. "Comes right outta nowhere."


	16. Lessons

When she opens her eyes, Michelle is staring at a pair of all-too-familiar boots. Her hair is plastered to the side of her face by what she guesses is blood, as it's hot and very sticky. Maybe it's hers, maybe it's Bruno's; she can't tell which. Her eyes are open but apparently, he hasn't noticed her awake yet, as he's not making a horrible pun or a cheesy comment about her current predicament. She has scant seconds before he realizes she's awake and reads her thoughts like an open book, and realizes that she's planning something. Her slim black jacket's sleeves are very long; enough for her to slowly try and pull something out of her black glove; a back up last resort weapon, just in case this sort of thing happened. She presses her wrist against her thigh; she's lying on her stomach on the bottom of another van (what is his obsession with using vans?) and at the angle he's sitting, he won't be able to see what she's doing if she's careful. With her wrist against her thigh, hand obscured by her jacket's sleeve, she slowly tries to coax the weapon out of her glove and into her palm.

"Good morning, star shine; the Earth says, 'hello'." Joker says down at her, his tone faux-affectionate (mocking, derisive more than anything), and when she doesn't respond, he taps her head with the toe of his boot. "You need acting classes; I can still tell you're not asleep."

"Go to Hell." Michelle snaps, venomously, ignoring the feeling of déjà vu coming from this very familiar conversation. He presses his shoe down on her head and leans his weight on it slightly; she balls her hands into fists but doesn't let him hear her make a noise.

"Honey sweet, like always." He leans more of his weight onto her skull, and she rolls out from under his foot and moves to a sitting position, glaring hard at him. He's never seen her quite this angry with him before, and it's quite refreshing to see her not just collapsing at the slightest touch. Then again, he's also kind of happy because he'll get to break her back down again, so he's kind of looking forward to that. "Why so cantankerous?" He folds his hands in his lap and smiles down at her, as if his gloves aren't currently soaked in dog's blood.

"You're a heartless bastard," Michelle snaps, and Joker is somewhat surprised that she's being so bold, though he doesn't let it show and just keeps on smiling. "You're _sick_."

"You know," He leans forward but remains in his seat, his hands on his knees, "I hear that so much nowadays. You have _no idea_ how much they like that word in Arkham." He reaches out and grabs her by the lower jaw, pressing his thumb against her cheekbone and the dark scar running down it. As soon as he does, Michelle lashes out at his face, or his throat, or whatever she can hit, and he sees the glint of a knife a moment before she does. He grabs her hand and doesn't flinch as the knife blade digs into his palm, using this grip on her hand to drag her towards him while keeping his grip on her jaw.

"Don't play with toys that you don't know how to use," He twists the knife out of her grip and flips it into his own, before cutting a deep gash in her hand to match his. She yelps and throws herself to the floor of the van, out of his grip, clutching her hand to her chest and glaring even harder at him than before, as he admires her knife. "Good taste, Michelle." He says distantly, pocketing her knife. He glances to her again, smiling in a rather friendly manner. "So, how's life treating you on the outside?"

"You screwed it all up for me." Michelle mutters loud enough to be heard. "I can't enjoy life because of you." She looks back up at him and sees that he's frowning, but it's obviously fake because he's overdoing it and it looks ridiculous.

"Oh? How'd I do that?" He's ignoring the gash in his hand almost completely, while Michelle is clutching her hand to her chest in agony. It's just another thing about him that makes him all the less human. Michelle closes her eyes and scoots to the other side of the van, pressing her back against it. She's done being meek and terrified of him; it's time for her to step up and probably die in an unspeakably painful manner.

"I don't have to answer to you. And I don't care if you think I do, and I don't care if you stick a knife in my face for saying it! Fuck off!" She shouts at him, and he just sighs and cracks his neck.

"I've been waiting for you to say that," He tells her, standing up from his side of the van and walking towards her, as she stands up and braces herself. "Two forces can only press against one another for so long until one has to…_break_." He snaps his fingers at that last word as the van comes to a stop almost eerily timed to him reaching her, and she dodges his grab and throws open the doors to the back of the van, dashing out. It's not the old warehouse base that they're at; this is a completely new place, and it looks like it's an abandoned factory of some sort. She knows she can't win if she actually _fights_ him, but if she can distract him somehow…maybe she can-

"Going somewhere?" He hooks his fingers in her long hair as she runs, and Michelle curses herself for not cutting it when she had the chance as he drags her back, laughing. She coughs slightly as she hits his chest, and he grabs her wrists and pins them to her chest, speaking in her ear. "Am I the one you're _really_ angry with? I don't think I am." She seems to quiet down a moment, hanging her head, before suddenly jerking it back and hitting something hard with the back of her head. His grip loosens, enough so that she can twist in his grip and flatten her hands over his chest, shoving hard. He staggers back a step, a hand over his face, _still giggling_.

"How do you even know!?" Michelle shouts at him, her hands balled into fists. "You don't know anything about me! And I **am** pissed at you, you _heartless fuck_; you killed-"

"Your pooches?" Joker cuts in, dropping his hand from his face, smiling. "_I_ didn't kill either one of your mongrels; _you_ killed them. Well, _one_ of them…"

Michelle is already charging, common sense be fucking damned; she swings at him, a wide, almost drunken swing at his head that he catches easily, before dragging her forward and slamming his knee in her stomach. She doubles over, gagging; he slams an elbow into the middle of her back and she goes down.

"You're not angry with me; at least, not exclusively." He states, and as she tries to get up, he places his boot on her back and forces her back down into the dirt. "No, I think you're angry that everything is so_…**unfair**_." Michelle flounders in the dirt, and the more she struggles, the harder he pushes her down to the ground, until he just lifts his foot and stomps on her back. She stops struggling after he does that. "You're mad that no matter how hard you try to live **normally**, you _just can't catch a break_."

"That's not-"She begins, before he stomps on her again.

"Shh, I'm not finished. I was right, wasn't I? Now," He drags her up by the arm, and tugs her around (she's limp as a ragdoll) so that she can see the Gotham buildings (Michelle guesses that they're on the outskirts of Gotham, from the distance to the buildings). "You see them like **_I_** do, don't you? They're animals, tearing one another to shreds for petty change and their own inflated egos." Her head lolls against his shoulder, his arm hooked around her waist and pinning her against him so that she doesn't collapse and interrupt him. "They're helpless, useless; content to wallow in their mud and dirt as long as they scratch out a _little_ **_more_** profit than the people next door." His voice rises and falls as he speaks; it's obvious that he's very passionate about this, and Michelle just listens, having little choice. "They're miserable and can't even tell!" The last sentence ends in a laugh, a high-pitched hyena-like cackle. As he starts again, however, the humor fades from his voice and he growls out the next sentence.

"It's…so…_pathetic_."

Michelle raises her head, weakly, to look at him from her peripheral vision. The annoyed expression (maybe even a snarl) flickers to a smile, a crazed smile that chills her. "That's why they deserve people like me. People like you. People like the Batman. As long as they stay so animalistic, so _disgusting_, then Gotham City is going to stay ground zero for the crazies." He looks down at her; smiling in that crazed manner that suggests mental illness (more like screams it). "Don't _you_ think so, Michelle?"

She doesn't answer. What do you possibly say to that kind of speech; 'Oh…totally'? So she asks something else instead.

"What do you mean, 'People like you'? I'm not…like _you_." She tries to keep disgust out of her tone on that last word, and fails. He just smiles though, and it's both insane and, at the same time, knowing.

"Oh, you'd be surprised exactly how much like me you _really_ are. You'll see." He winks at her, almost mischievously, before loosening his grip on her and letting her collapse to the ground, falling to her knees. "Take your last look at Gotham, Michelle; make it fast." He tells her, the good mood in his voice disappearing and replaced by a more serious tone. A goon grabs her by the upper arm and drags her back towards the factory, jerking her around to face forward, and she sees that the Joker is already walking towards the building. She twists around to see the tall buildings in the distance once last time, before they walk into the cool shadows of the factory building and a door shuts in her face.


	17. Dogs

She's not scared anymore, not _really_. You can only get kidnapped and beaten by an insane homicidal clown-themed psychopath so many times before you kind of get used to it.

Michelle sits in her chair in the office of the factory (it looks like an abandoned chemical factory, from the equipment she's seen here), hands folded in her lap, body aching from the latest lesson in respect by the man now sitting on the (very nice) desk, offhandedly examining his gloves instead of telling her what he's called her here for. The office is littered with newspapers (he's fond of newspapers, she's found), and empty curled-up tubes of grease paint, and of course, a host of different length knives, all obsessively sharpened to perfection. She stares at him, blankly, for a couple more minutes before eventually getting fed up and snapping. "What is it, Joker?!" She asks him, tersely; it's been a few days since he dragged her here, and she's been staying in an old storage room (how familiar) for that time, waiting. And now, he's called her up here to...ignore her.

"Ta-da." He throws a newspaper at her (everybody has a thing for throwing newspapers at her), almost as if he had been waiting for her to snap at him the entire time. She glares a moment, before taking the newspaper and unfolding it, hunting for any relevant news. More chittering about the Joker escaping, about how they don't know how he did it, about...well, everybody freaking the fuck out. People are moving out of Gotham just because it's so easy for a madman that's blown up more than his fair share of innocent people (and cost the city millions from his damage toll) to escape a top-notch asylum. Well, it's probably not _easy_; they still have no idea how he got out, and Michelle now wants to ask him about it. She peeks over the top of the newspaper to look at him, and he's reading the back page of the newspaper, the one that she's holding; he can't really be reading the coupon page, can he? Michelle shrugs it off, and keeps hunting. After two run-throughs of the newspaper, she folds it up and waves it slightly, to emphasize her point.

"I don't see anything; what am I supposed to be looking for? There's nothing here!"

"Ex-_actly_."

Michelle stares at Joker for a moment, blankly, before unfolding the paper and hunting for anything at all about a former captive of the Joker being kidnapped from her apartment washed with blood. There's nothing about it.

"They want to forget about you. And you know why?" He stands, pulling the paper out of her hands; her fingers are so loosely holding it that it just slides out of them. "Because," He leans in her face, smiling. "They blame _you_."

Michelle stares blankly at him, for the moment ignoring (or possibly not even noticing) how close he's leaning in her face, or how insanely creepy it is. "Me? Blame me? For what?"

"Me...taking a _vacation_ from Arkham." He straightens up, rolling up the newspaper tightly, and beginning to pace. "They're dogs, just like you are. And the moment a bigger..._rabid_ dog showed up, they tore each other apart. They need a sacrifical goat, and they picked you; after all, Michelle King is a lost cause! She's on the Joker's hit list already; we can't do anything for **_her_**." He points at her now, and she just stares. "You're dead to them. They probably even _want_ you dead, so they can get **rid** of you once and for all." He watches her put her face in her hands, and smiles a little wider at it.

"That's right. They don't want you anymore. Dog eat dog world, Michelle, and the dogs just ate you _alive_."

She's not crying, he can see that, but her hands are quaking. And suddenly, she looks up at him again, and her face is almost devoid of worry or care or anger or _anything at all_.

"Your hair isn't naturally green?" She asks, almost childishly curious, and it throws him off for a moment. Oh, that's right; his roots are showing (a breezy blond color, if he ever washed his hair) and he needs to dye it again. He's been meaning to do that ever since he got out of Arkham. He glances at the crown of her head and says what he's been meaning to for a little while, before he got carried away in trying to corrupt this woman.

"Yours isn't naturally black?"

Michelle blinks, running a hand through her hair. She's been meaning to do the exact same thing.

"I'm not Asian; of course it isn't. It's red." She pulls her hair in front of her face and fiddles with it, absentmindedly. She's not thinking about what he's said; she's regressing somewhat into an almost childish nature. It's a defense mechanism. He knows that what he's telling her is _working_. He takes hold of her by the upper arm and pulls her to her feet, guiding her towards the door as if they were old friends.

"Why don't you go lie down? You look kind of..._pale_."

"I do? Oh...sorry...I think I will...thanks..." She mumbles, distractedly, and when he opens the door, a masked thug (there aren't that many, at least not yet; he has to build his force back up from the foundations) grabs Michelle by the back of the neck and roughly jerks her in the direction of her room. She yelps in pain, before the thug does the same thing and lets her go, clutching a long gash heading from the back of his hand down to his elbow.

"Ah-ah-ah. At least _pretend_ to be civilized." Joker admonishes, waving a knife like a baton, and he doesn't miss the way Michelle looks back at him thankfully, almost admiringly. It's so easy to destroy people, so easy to take a good person with strong morals, and find that little crack in the chitin armor they've constructed around themselves. So easy to jam a knife in that crack and keep twisting it until that armor spiders like breaking glass and falls to pieces at their feet. The thug cusses under his breath and then carefully (politely) guides Michelle down the hallway, towards her room. Joker doesn't miss how she turns around and looks at him over the thug's shoulder, before turning around and walking straight again, and it makes him want to laugh until his stomach bursts.


	18. Phoenixes

Her nails have grown long enough to be clipped straight again. She's chewing on them right now, though it's mainly a nervous tic she's relying on to try and not go insane here.

Before, she was a backup to have help out when needed. She was a possible bomb, too; a last resort, or even something to take rage out on. But now, she knows that he's actually _trying_ to make her as fucked in the head as he is. Or maybe he isn't. Maybe she's just being paranoid. There's no way to tell.

Her small room has the scent of chemicals in it, and the air tastes odd. It burns her nose and makes her eyes water if she opens them too wide. The air is acrid and hot, muggy almost, and Michelle has already stripped down to her thin white undershirt, her black coat abandoned in the corner of the room. She wants to take off her shoes too, except she doesn't trust there not to be broken glass or rusty nails or anything else bad to step on strewn across the floor, since the room is dim. That lighting problem is helping her paranoia grow like dandelions; she can't calm down no matter what she tries. More than anything else though, she's worried about her cop friend. His name is Michael, she remembers now, recalling how they joked about him being the male version of her. They were good friends, and eventually, they started pseudo-dating. Now that she's trapped under the Joker's thumb all over again, waiting for whatever's going to happen to her, she likes to sit on the dirty chemical-soaked mattress against the wall (sleeping on that thing can't be healthy at all) and reminisce; reside in her good memories to try and hold onto her sanity.

She thinks she might be in love with Michael. Maybe. She can't tell. He's nice, and doesn't harangue her about her time with Joker, like some people do, and better than everything else, doesn't stare at her scar. They can talk and laugh and they've even gone out on a date or two (they didn't call it a date, of course, but that's pretty much what it was).

It more or less started out when he was the one that interviewed her in the hospital. She told him the scant details that she wanted to, and left out a lot of things just because she was in a horrible mood all the time, and he stayed kind and understanding the entire time. Slowly, she warmed up to him somewhat, and started acting more friendly towards him. They became acquaintances, and then, friends. They continued to talk over her hospital stay, which was practically the real reason that she even kept her sanity over the long hours of sleeping or watching crappy tv talk shows. They didn't like her watching Cops, which she tried to sneak in anyway, because they told her it was bad to get excited in her state. She snuck in Jerry Springer when it came on, too, and Michael watched it with her, not telling on her like he probably should have. She liked him for that. Eventually, it came time for her to be released, and she exchanged phone numbers with him before leaving. Michelle didn't really think she'd ever see the man again, since he probably just befriended her because he had to.

"Michelle, want to go out for coffee?" He called her up one morning, while she was at work, to her surprise. She wasn't expecting to hear from him again. She said 'yes', but at noon when she took her break. They got together for coffee more often after that time, since he said that he worked late and needed it, and Michelle enjoyed the company. He wasn't trying to cozy up to her just because he wanted the inside scoop; he just wanted to be friends. Over time, they spent more and more time together and eventually, they started dating, though they'd deny it up and down if you ever confronted them about it. He didn't seem to mind the publicity that Michelle got, and Michelle liked having somebody to talk to that she could put her trust in. They went out to dinner, to the movies, normal middle-class things that any other boyfriend she'd ever had wouldn't be caught dead doing. They went to normal restaurants instead of classy five-star deals.

One day, at dinner, during a conversation on the crime problem in Gotham (it was nice talking about serious things with people that knew what the hell they were talking about, instead of rich people that had no idea about anything other than the stock market or caviar or other things. Michelle knows she's probably incredibly biased, and they might be nice people, but she just doesn't get what they talk about. Michael though, they can understand each other, and he actually _listens_ to her), Michelle began to talk about Joker and how he was such a menace and a psycho and all the other connotations usually attached to the name. Michael didn't seem to be bothered by listening, however, and listened quite attentively as Michelle went in-depth about what happened in her imprisonment, how the Joker was like, how he used her fears against her (she also told him about her history, though she had done that earlier, and he was very caring and compassionate about it so she trusted him). He asked a question now and then, but it was small things he asked about and then went silent, as she continued to explain her views on the man himself. She told him that she thought that he wasn't a human, not really; more like a driving force, the man that personified the chaotic, dark half of Gotham city, while the late Harvey Dent personified the good people that wanted to save themselves and remain good. When he asked about what she thought the Batman was, she said that he was the very thin gray line right in the middle, where the two meet. She continued to talk the rest of the date, as Michael urged her to talk about it all and get it out of her system, and she obliged. There were another couple dates after that, where he always let her rant and rave and explain things about how she saw it all, and the last date was the most comprehensive. She told him absolutely everything. About a day later was when she was kidnapped the second time.

Michelle puts her head in her hands and wonders about how Michael is taking things. She knows that he's missing her. That he's so sad and wants to get her back. More than anything else, that's what's keeping her going nowadays. The knowledge that at least one person, one measly little person in the millions of people in Gotham City, wants to save her. She wonders if he's hunting for her at this very second.

She's also very tired.

Grabbing her black jacket, she lays it over the possibly deadly mattress and lays on that, closing her eyes. She dreams about him that night, about a wedding.

She wakes up later to hysterical laughter. It rings off the hallways outside her door, a hyena-esque shrieking that sounds almost hoarse, as if the laugher had been laughing so hard for a long time and now their mouth and throat were drying out. It's a dry rattle of a laugh, and it's completely and utterly terrifying. It's also getting closer. She sits up suddenly, tired but now mentally completely awake. The door comes open and it's the Joker, and he's still laughing as he throws another newspaper at her and slams the door shut, howling with laughter. Michelle fumbles the paper, as usual, before looking at the front page.

**JOKER VICTIM NOT SO INNOCENT**

_A new report on the mental state of Michelle King, recent and supposedly 'innocent' victim of the Joker has been compiled recently, by a close associate, a police officer by the name of Michael Keegan. Officer Keegan has spent the last two months compiling information from Ms. King herself, information that reveals King to not be a victim, but a sick woman that may prove dangerous in the future._

_"I didn't think she was telling me the entire truth," Officer Keegan states, "And I knew that the citizens of Gotham deserve nothing but the truth."_

_The articles he has written are first-hand accounts from King herself about her time trapped with the Joker, and what she has revealed blows her entire victim façade completely open. She has been quoted as saying, "I don't think he's a bad person, not inherently, maybe just in need of help", "He is doing at least some good in Gotham", "When I worked with him, he was violent and rough, unpredictable, but I can't say that I didn't have at least a little bit of fun", and other such statements that implicate her in complicit assistance of the Joker's mad cause for total destruction._

_"She's a lying –expletive-, that's what she is." Keegan has also stated. "She's as crazy as that clown is. We need to lock her up just like him, if he doesn't kill her himself. Be doing us all a favor, if you ask me."_

_"What her personal views are isn't a deciding factor in whether we try and rescue her or not," Commissioner Gordon has stated in a very passing comment to us. "She's still a person and she's still in a horrible situation, and we're going to do whatever we can to get her back."_

_It seems that not even the most innocent appearing of people can be trusted, because, as in Ms. King's case, they may secretly be just as dangerous, if not even more dangerous, than the psychopath in plain sight._

The Joker waits outside her door for a few minutes, having quieted himself down just for this purpose, waiting for it when it hits. Most people wouldn't want to be within a square mile when this bomb drops; he's going to wait right at ground zero. Five minutes pass; ten. No sound. She can't be that slow of a reader, can she? He turns and cracks the door, and sees that she's sitting on the edge of her mattress, hands over her face, her shoulders quaking heavily. When he finally opens the door and she doesn't raise her head, he walks up to her, curious.

"Michelle? Anyone home?"He asks, leaning in as he does, and she gives no answer. The woman's a complete turnip. He leans back, turning to walk away, and feels her barrel into his side, her arms locking around his torso, her face buried into his filthy purple coat, and she starts wailing. He turns back to look at her, thoroughly surprised, and she presses herself against his chest, trying to be as close as possible to him as she starts sobbing wildly.

"He use-used me!!" She wails into his chest, as he holds his arms out to the side, clear of her, and stands there, not sure of what to do. "H-He n-n-never c-ar-cared-d a-b-b-bout m-muh-me at all!!" Her words are garbled as she tries to talk, and as he puts his hands on her shoulders and pushes, she doesn't budge.

"That's a shame. Get off." He gets his hand under her chin and pushes as hard as he can, but she twists her head and gets it free of his grip before burying it in his shoulder, her forehead pressed against his neck, continued to sob.

"I loved him!" Michelle cries, gripping tighter to the Joker, as he sighs and works his hands between her and his chest, pressing against her chest and trying to pry her off and shove her away.

"Love is blind, lust is deaf, psychosis is obvious. Get. Off." He gives a hard shove and she loses her grip, falling to the floor, before latching onto his leg.

"Don't leave me! Please, don't you leave me too!" She's starting to become clearer in her words, but that doesn't make her let go of him any faster, and so he offhandedly begins kicking at her.

"If you don't let go of me, I'm going to stick you like a pig-"

Kick.

"I don't care!"

Kick.

"It's going to be…incredibly painful…"

He's growling his words now, and lands a hard kick to her shoulder. She loosens but won't let go of him.

"You're all I have!!" Michelle wails, and Joker is so surprised that he stops kicking at her for a moment. He wasn't expecting her to say _that_. He _could_ correct her, tell her that she's dirt to him, a walking bomb that he can use whenever he so chooses, that she'll never amount to him to what gunpowder or gasoline or cold, sharp steel does, but he doesn't. He knows that right now is the deciding factor between her falling into a catatonic state, stop eating, and then die like a sick dog, and her becoming something _beautiful_.

"Michelle…" He says her name again, and it's almost a coo as she raises her head and sees him opening his arms. She stands up, horribly sore from the kicking but really unable to feel it all that well, and falls against his chest, continuing to cry. She doesn't see that he's smiling, because he knows that he's won.


	19. Tools

He can't say he doesn't enjoy, in some small way, having her so attached to him.

Of course, Joker doesn't _like_ Michelle at all, not really. He thinks she's amusing enough, but ultimately, she's like a wind-up doll: somewhat nice to look at, worth some short-lived laughs, but completely useless otherwise. She's useful for two things, really; she's a walking bomb, and she's an extra pair of hands when he can afford to have a very useless goon staggering around like a moron.

What's worth the trouble of dealing with her, however, is what she _could_ be.

The Joker, he can see talent. Not really talent, per se, at least not in the way others think of the word. Other people might replace 'talent' with 'psychoses'. He knows when he finds somebody with the potential to become something as wonderfully twisted as himself. Sure, you can drive any normal, well-adjusted person insane if you apply the right pressure; look at Harvey Dent. But when you want to drive a person insane and leave them coherent afterwards, you can't just slam crisis after crisis on them; they crack, and their brain turns to goo, and they sit in a corner and babble to themselves all day. You have to do it in a particular, careful way. It's like chess with the human mind.

He sees potential in some people, better than any of those psychiatrists at Arkham could. He might've made a good psychiatrist himself, if he hadn't taken to chaos and mayhem instead. He saw potential in Dent after his girlfriend went up in flames. He saw potential in Michelle, too.

It was a complete twist of fate that he even noticed her in the crowd at the Wayne party. One bad smear of lipstick and her entire life is in ruins; that's why life is so hilarious. You can smear your lipstick and become the newest chew toy of Gotham's premier psychotic. He saw the flash of red, and then he saw her smeared smile, and he thought she was making fun of him, playing him off as a joke to be laughed at. It wasn't that she was imitating him, because there are tons of people in Gotham city that idolize him; Arkham crazies that look up to him as a sort of hero of their kind, which is completely disgusting to him, honestly, teenagers that think he's the coolest psycho in the city, pickpockets and slime that admire the fact that he has Gotham City by the scruff of its neck like some sort of stray gutter cat. It's the idea that someone is laughing _at_ him, not _with_ him.

It pissed him off.

So he was coming up to maybe cut her throat, scare off the other partygoers deciding that they were big boys and girls and that they could take him down with broken champagne glasses and kebab spears. He would have sliced her neck, too, if her boyfriend hadn't shoved her. He found that kind of funny. No loyalty anymore, not even in the high class. Not that there ever was any loyalty to begin with. The upper class is like the Gotham Mafia; no honor, no respect, no _rules_.

He rolled with it. Put a knife to her neck, left smoothly after Batsy took a swan dive after Dent's squeeze. Thought it was kind of funny that she was still able to quip a witty reply back to him on the elevator ride down, thought she might like to die outside instead of in an elevator. An elevator would be unpleasant to die in; look at your reflection in the metal, blood spurting from your jugular, eyes going blank and glazed. He felt like getting some fresh air anyway.

When he tossed her to the pavement, he was going to let the goon handle her, because he thought that Chuckles or whatever his name was could handle a helpless woman in an evening gown. Apparently, his thugs aren't as capable as he thought they were, because she pulled one of the oldest tricks in the book and outsmarted the guy. That was reason enough to kill him. But when he blew out the man's head, and getting ready to blow hers out too, he saw her have a kitten at seeing the body, and he thought she might be worth a laugh to have around. Maybe he could mess around with this one before he slit her throat and watched her bubble and drown in her own blood. He dragged her back to the base. Decided to torment her for amusement in his down time.

Then he found out that she was terrified of the dark, of being roughhoused, of blood, of so many things. A wonderful cocktail of neuroses. He saw the potential there for some sort of weapon, though it wasn't something he was going to aim for. A pathetic, terrified woman that couldn't help herself, that cried and shivered and played princess that needs rescuing. Disgusting. He didn't want a tool so brittle. She'd make a good human bomb though; that's an honor, in his book. Bombs are one or two levels above goons.

After the visit to Gotham PD, and a glance at her file, he knew that she might be worth something. A woman traumatized, scorned, sex slave for three years that beat her captor's head in when she got the chance. She can fight back when she's pushed; she just needs that little push.

He's a good pusher.

That's really when the Joker decided to try and see what he could create with Michelle's canvas. More like a pet experiment than anything else; if he fails and ruins her, oh well. If he succeeds, then great. He locks her in the pitch black room when she gets mouthy, when he does finally find out that she can stand up to him outside of complete safety. He waits. He finds out that she's good after he does this to her, like a dog with its nose rubbed into a mess it's made, or spanked with a newspaper.

After Batsy gets him captured, locked up for good this time, he asks about her just so that she knows that he hasn't forgotten. Why abandon a project half-finished? If he doesn't finish her, then she's going to live her life in misery, and if he breaks her, then she'll die and he won't leave any loose ends. He's sure that he's doing good on his part to haunt her, even as he sits in Arkham and waits for that sudden idea of how to get out of the asylum; it's going to hit him randomly, in a moment of complete boredom. It does. He escapes. Too easy.

He finds out where she lives. Finds out that she goes to a psychiatrist and complains that her life is so horrible, the world seems so unfair, and the people living in it are dogs. She's seeing it like he does, just like he said she would. During a 'visit' to her home to see what sort of protection against intruders she's undoubtedly set up, he finds her two rather large, slobbering, foaming at the mouth dogs. That's a setback.

Once he decides to take her back and fix her proper, he draws his little message on her work building and banks on her coming back impaired somehow, in one way or another. It pays off. While she's gone, he visits her house, and feeds her mutts some glass-filled hamburger. The stupid, bigger one eats most of it and he knows the pooch's days, minutes really, are numbered. He goes to break in, wait for her, set the _mood_ really, and the one that ate most of the glassy hamburger attacks. It sinks its teeth into his forearm and he beats the shit out of it to pay it back, gouges out its eyes with his thumbs, breaks the dog's back legs, kicks out all its teeth, and watches it blindly drag itself, whimpering, bubbling up blood, under the couch. He laughs at it as it does. Never liked dogs.

The other dog comes next, and he grabs the animal and drags it to the bathroom, digs a switchblade from the collarbone down to its hind legs, and hangs it from the shower head with a daisy chain of socks. It's a hilarious sight. He doodles on the mirror, so that she can look and see him waiting for her and it turns out perfect, and he waits in the corner of the room.

Michelle is just as stupid as he thought. Maybe not stupid, but lacking in common sense at least. She plays into the trap just like he thought she would, though the mercy killing of her dog is something that makes him have to stifle his giggles. So _overdramatic_.

He takes her down, and is surprised enough at how combative she gets on the ride home. He has no problem knocking her back down to her level, which is about boot-level, and he keeps chipping away at that shield of hers. Chip, chip, chip. Newspapers, his own wonderfully twisted view of the world; he knows that she's dangerously close to her wonderful breakthrough.

It's when a cop lets out a tell-all, very candid statement to the newspapers. Joker knows that this is it. This is his ace in the hole; this is the joker card that's going to smash her into a million pieces.

He's right.

Michelle King breaks. She snaps. She shatters like glass. She tells him that he's all she's got left to her, and he doesn't doubt her in the least. Who's been there for her when everyone else abandoned her? He has. He's nice to her sometimes. It's not often, but it's still sometimes. He's like a friend to her, a real friend that listens to her when she talks, and teaches her about the world; he's a teacher and a friend and he's all she's got left. She's going to need him or she'll go gibbering mad.

Right now, as he walks down the hall with her under his arm, since she's not letting go of him for anything right now, the Joker knows that this woman is going to be his very best tool, at least for a little while. There's a good chance that he's going to eventually have her blood on his hands, and her corpse at his feet, and if, when that ever happens, he's going to laugh. Laugh, because he _made_ her, and he's the one that _destroyed_ her.

He still needs to meld her into his ideal shape, though. It's going to be a process, like everything is, but it's going to pay off in the end, if not for usefulness, then for amusement.

"Michelle," He begins in an easy tone, "What do you want to _do_ with your life?" The question rolls off his tongue easily; this answer is going to be a very powerful deciding factor in what he makes her into. She keeps walking with him, ignoring the odd looks from the goons and thugs as the pair walk past, and looks up to his face with a childish expression, though her face is still ugly with puffy red eyes and blotchy cheeks and makeup running down her cheeks.

"Anything. Just…please, don't leave me. I don't want to be _alone_."

Joker smiles at that, because he knows that he's got a perfect tool in his hands.


	20. Identities

Right after she breaks, Michelle is almost like a child.

"It's getting sort of, you know, late," Joker tells her as she clings to his arm, walking in step with him. She's been there for a good hour or two and honestly, he wants her off of him. He's tired, and a clingy woman coupled with that natural insomnia isn't going to help him get that hour or two of sleep he usually runs on.

"Can I come with you?" She asks, loosening her grip on his arm as he pulls free of her, folding her hands in front of her as she keeps at his heels. He walks down the hallway and to a large wooden door, and when he jerks the door open, Michelle sees that the room he stays in is dirty, almost as dirty, if not even _dirtier_, than her own room is. She sees broken glass glinting in the low light off of the floor and loose papers thrown about helter-skelter. She walks in after him, or is about to, when the door slams shut in her face and locks.

"No." Joker tells her from the other side of the door in a gruff, terse manner, and Michelle stares at the door. She can walk back to her room, but…she can't stay there, no. Not when that stained mattress is where her heart was broken. And she's too afraid that it's a test; a test to see if she's really loyal to Joker, if she'll persevere just to make him happy. So she sits down next to the doorway, on the floor, and pulls her knees up to her chest, crossing her arms around them and leaning her head on her knees. She's so tired, but she's not going to fail this test. He's probably testing to see if she can stay awake too. She's not going to fail him.

* * *

Around six hours later is when Joker finally leaves his room again; he only slept about two and a half hours, but the other four hours were spent wondering what sort of hell he should raise next. He has no plan, no schemes; the way it should be, of course. He is, however, getting ideas. He throws open the door, letting it swing hard outwards to slam into the wall like it always did, and instead, hears it bounce off of something that's not a wall, and hears someone groan.

"Huh?" He leans out of the doorway, looking at the foot of his door, and sees Michelle sitting there, now looking up at him. Her eyes have dark circles under them, and she's rubbing her shoulder where the door collided with her. She's stayed out the entire time, waiting for him. Like a kicked puppy. It's darkly hilarious and sickeningly pathetic at the same time.

That's _perfect_.

"Michelle." He smiles at her, and the scars make his smile look ghastly and huge, but she doesn't seem to notice and instead perks up slightly, standing up.

"Did I pass?" She asks, her eyes wide and hopeful and so very nervous, and he cocks his head very slightly, looking confused. "I mean the test. I tried not to fall asleep, because I didn't know if that was a part of it too, but I dozed off for a minute or two. Did I still pass?" She leans forward, her eyes plaintive and worried, and the attempt at a non-threatening smile fails as his smile turns devious. Poor girl has convinced herself that he tests her to make sure she's completely loyal. Saccharine. Sickening.

"Well," Joker begins, struggling to keep his face serious as he seems to ponder it. "You did pass the main part of the test…falling asleep though; that's a little disappointing…" He watches with untold mirth as Michelle's expression becomes alarmed at his wavering decision. "I suppose you did. Go figure." He finally says, and she lets out an audible sigh of relief. She's so paranoid that she's convinced herself he cares enough to test her.

"I'm so glad," She sighs, walking forward and leaning against his chest. "I was worried for a mo-" She's cut off as he places a palm flat on her left hip, before giving her a hard shove that sends her sprawling across the concrete floor.

"Did I tell you that you could do that?" He asks, in an annoyed deadpan, and she sits up, a hand on her head right about where it smacked against the floor. She's confused.

"Um…huh?"

"I didn't tell you that you could touch me."

"I'm…sorry?"

He walks past her, almost ignoring her completely except for a pat on the head as he passes, almost like he's patting a dog. "Good girl." He keeps walking, and when he doesn't hear her following him, whistles. He hears her scramble to her feet and soon walk behind him, and he knows that he's going to have to temper this attachment like steel. She needs her own individuality so that she can do what he tells her to, and make decisions on her own without his constant guidance. It's going to be a process, like everything is, but he's going to turn her into a finely tuned weapon if it kills her.

* * *

"Why am I doing this again?" She asks in a deadpan tone, as he presses the keys into her palm.

"You're not intimidating enough," Joker tells her, curling her fingers over the keys to the black SUV out front. "You look like any other joyless dog of Gotham. You," He smiles, "Need to be more…cheery. Colorful. _Dramatic_." It's been a few days since she broke down, and now she's less afraid that he's going to lose interest in her. She trusts him that he's going to still want her. The tempering is going along well.

"Like a costume?"

"**_Smart_**. _Yes_, a costume, outfit, anything; make yourself look different, special." He doesn't need to add, "Like me", because it doesn't need to be said; that's just a given. She nods, and looks back at the SUV. He's given her the address to the guy that did his…_unusual_ suit, somebody that deals in eccentric clothing for people that can fork the cash up for it. He tells her that if she goes to this guy, she just needs to tell him that the Joker sent her and he'll get her what she needs, payment to be delivered later on. She turns around, walking around to the driver's side of the SUV, and hears him call her name.

"And Michelle; try and escape, and believe me, I _will_ know, and I blow the car sky high." He shows her a detonator produced from his pocket and arms it, to show her that it's real, and disarms it before putting it away. He doesn't stop smiling eerily, threateningly, as he tells her this. She nods, shakily, before starting up the engine and beginning to drive into Gotham.

She spends the day hunting through shops, a scarf around her neck and mouth, a hat on her head, and her long black coat wrapped around her. Nobody recognizes her as she walks the streets and through the shops, hunting through various masquerade and Halloween stores for a perfect costume, while trying to decipher exactly what the Joker meant by 'dramatic'. All the costumes she finds at the costume stores are too bulky, too slutty, or too fragile to do anything in. Joker told her to be back by night, and it's getting a little close, and she doesn't forget for a moment the fact that he has the car wired with explosives. She doesn't even consider the fact that she could run if she wanted to, and abandon the car to be blown sky high, and try and get away. She could. She just doesn't want to, not in the least.

Finally, she drives to the shop that the Joker had recommended her, a small shop tucked between two towering buildings. She parks and walks in, hesitantly, to see a bored looking man at the counter.

"Excuse…me?" Michelle asks, trying to get his attention. "I'm wondering if I can look through…special costumes."

"What?" He asks, looking at her sharply. She pulls something from her pocket; a calling card, the Joker told her, that could get her into the back room where she wanted to be. She hands him the Joker card with blood smudged onto it, and the man tosses her a key and points towards a back room. "In there. Hurry up."

As soon as Michelle walks into the back room, she knows what the Joker was talking about. There are so many different outfits that seem to have been made as backups for other people; a suit covered with question marks, black latex skintight suits, a red and black-checkered skintight harlequin suit, and in back, a purple coat in a long box partially obscuring a dizzyingly-patterned vest. There's even a spare suit for the Joker; so this is probably where he got that new suit from after busting out of Arkham.

"I need a motif." She murmurs, trying to think of something. It's going to have to be esoteric, eccentric, all of those wonderful e words signifying mental sickness. She digs through the clothing, trying to find something that means something to her. Something…important. Something that just sticks to her, something that…that…

Michelle sticks her hand in something silky and, for no real reason at all, grabs it and pulls it out. She sees what it is, and her eyes widen, and an ironic smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

"You're joking." She breathes, before looking up at the ceiling, as if she were staring at God himself, if he even exists, and giving him a look that says, 'Really? You're a sick bastard, you know that?' She looks back at the outfit in her hands and sighs, under her breath, before picking up all the pieces of it (they're all together, at least, closely enough).

"I think I have what I want," She tells the man behind the counter, and he glances back at her.

"Are you wearing it out?"

"…I think I am."

The Joker is getting impatient. It's dark, and she's still not back yet. He's not a very patient man, and is currently thumbing the detonator between the armed and disarmed positions, idly. She has five minutes…

The sound of a car engine pulling close and then cutting off sounds out from outside the building. She's back. Joker's anticipating something completely stupid and hilarious. She's probably going to pick something clown-themed too, and if she picks a mime, he's going to slap her. Nobody likes mimes. He sits on his desk and moves around to the seat behind it, waiting, as footsteps grow closer to his office. Is that wolf-whistling, too? What the hell? The door opens, tentatively; just a crack.

"Can…I come in?" Michelle asks, and her voice is shaking slightly; she's horribly nervous, and from what he can see of her cheeks, they're bright crimson. This ought to be good.

"Come in." He can barely hide his giddiness. The door is pushed open, she walks in, and he just stares. Of all the things he expected, he didn't expect this.

It's a black and white skintight suit, probably latex, and it's just as complicated as possible. The pants are low on her hips and go down to her ankles, the right leg entirely black, and the left leg entirely white. The top's colors are reversed; the left sleeve is black, and the right sleeve is white, and those colors end at her shoulders, though the sleeves are very long and hang down to her palms, the ends open in a wide bell shape. The part covering her torso is entirely white, though, and has a deep black Rorschach inkblot spot in the center, across her chest. The back is entirely black with a white Rorschach inkblot. She's wearing heels colored white and black too, and they clash with her pants; the right shoe is white, the left shoe black. Her gloves are much the same; left glove white, right glove black. Just looking at her hurts a person's eyes. She painted her face, too; though Joker doesn't know it, it's her Pagliacci makeup, though with a change; when she was out, she got a tattoo that ate up the rest of the daytime; a black star beginning at the top of her facial scar, with an inch-thick line running down the length of the scar, ending at her cheekbone where the scar ends. There's another inch-thick line on her other eye, though no star, and it starts right under her eyebrow and ends at the same point the other one does.

"…That's…" Joker starts, not sure how to phrase what he's thinking of. She's got red on her lips, so she's not a mime, and he doesn't get to slap her for _that_. Even through the paper white grease paint she's got smeared over her face, he can almost see the blush on her face. The suit _is_ kind of tight; doesn't leave much to the imagination.

"You probably think it's ugly, right? Ugh, I knew this was a bad idea." She hangs her head, before stopping, because she can hear Joker beginning to laugh. She stops, staring at him curiously, dejectedly, as he speaks to her through his giggling.

"I never said that it was ugly, Michelle, but why, if you'll be so kind?"

"Uh…I…used to work as a birthday…clown…" The last word is very quiet, but he hears it, because his laughter increases tenfold.

"A clown!! That's irony for you!"

"Y…yeah…eheh…anyway, I thought that something complicated and white and black…couldn't hurt? I don't know." She hangs her head, dejectedly, before he walks up to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. He can feel her body heat through the material.

"Got a name for this identity?" He asks, an arm around her shoulders as he leads her out the door and down the hallway. He's noticed that when she walks, she's less jumpy and talks easier for some reason.

"Yes, actually…I was stuck between, 'Pastiche', 'Pagliacci', and…'Schwarzwald'. But I might change it later."

"Quick of you to pick a new identity so fast. It takes some people for_ever_ to finally just **pick** something."

She smiles now, at that bit of pseudo-praise, and nestles under his arm a bit more. "I think I like Schwarzwald best. I couldn't use Rorschach, now could I?"

"It'd make sense, but…well, look at what happened to the _last_ guy that called himself Rorschach."


	21. Reveries

"Come on, Sh…Shoe…"

"Schwarzwald!"

"Oh yes, Schwarzwald. Let's **_go_**."

Michelle (now Schwarzwald) walks out of the chemical factory, at the Joker's side like an obedient dog, the new tattoos still stinging on her face. She doesn't know what he has planned for her, but she knows that it'll probably be traumatic. But as long as she can be useful to him, that's all that matters; her own psyche is probably broken beyond repair already, anyway. What's a few more crises?

He doesn't have to toss her into the van this time; she crawls in back herself, after he does, and shuts the doors behind them. There are goons, masked, sitting in back with them with high-caliber weapons, and they make Michelle nervous. They twitch, mutter to themselves, one is _licking_ his gun; Joker gets his thugs from mental hospitals, yes, but can't he pick any _less crazy_ people to…wait…everybody that works for the Joker **dies**, so it only makes sense that the craziest of crazies would dare work for him.

The only problem is that the crazies hit on her all the time, and her new skintight suit isn't helping matters any.

She herself is armed to the teeth; there's a hunting knife in a holster strapped to her upper thigh, a small pistol tucked inside her left boot, a small knife tucked inside her right glove, against her wrist and near her palm, and, of all things, there's a grenade in her costume top, situated in between her breasts. Joker says they come in handy, and since she doesn't have anywhere else to put it, might as well have it there. He's still completely indifferent to her, sexually, and Michelle is starting to think that he's either asexual or is only interested in Batman. It would make sense, in some way or another, she supposes. In her lap is another gun, a Chicago Typewriter, and she sits nervously across from Joker as he coolly prepares for whatever they're doing.

"Today, friends, we're going to make a house call to the good Commissioner," Joker announces to everyone, though mainly Michelle since she's out of the loop, and she blinks. Gordon? Why? She doesn't ask, of course, but she wonders.

"Why we goin' after him?" A thug next to Michelle asks, and subsequently dies when Joker puts a bullet in his head.

"I was _about_ to explain that. Impatient." He tosses the pistol back to the thug beside him that he'd stolen it from, before continuing, and Michelle notices that he's making a lot of hand motions again, so he's very excited. "With all of Gotham's _other_ '**heroes'** out of commission, there's only one little pillar of light left in the miserable, _terrified_ populace's lives, and that's the Commissioner himself."

"Why don't we just kill him? Be easy." A thug asks, and Joker doesn't kill him, just gives him a pointed glance.

"_Becaaause_-_ah_," He drags out that word so much longer than any of the others, and it proves, to Michelle at least, that Joker is at his most dangerous right now; he's agitated, excited; antsy for mayhem. "Killing him won't make a **_difference_**. Batsy might have…_interrupted_…Dent's rampage, and smoothed it all over by playing _martyr_, but let's see him, ah, _take down_ someone he works so **closely** with." At 'take down', he clenches his fists tightly as if he were going to crush the life out of Gotham with his bare hands. Michelle raises her hand, tentatively, and waits until Joker stares at her like she's an idiot and then asks, "What?"

"So…what are we going to do with him?" She asks, and he keeps staring like she's an idiot for not just guessing by now.

"We, Shoemaker, are going to '_enlighten'_ the good Commissioner into **_our_** view of the world." He seems quite pleased with himself, and Michelle only very quietly mumbles, "It's Schwarzwald". She's not having a panic attack about the bloody body at her feet; she doesn't even really notice it. "We're going to make him **_Arkham_** material, to be very…_concise_."

"Okay," Michelle mumbles, as the living thugs in the car shuffle nervously. "But where are we going right now? His house?"

"No," Joker states, "We're on the clock right now, and you're too…**blunt**. Think bigger, _dramatic_. The _entirety of Gotham_ is going to be our playground for this…_game_." The van stops and two thugs get out, at this unspecified location, with a package in their arms.

"Now, Schwarzy, where do you hit a person where it hurts **_most_**? You should know this one _well_." He asks her, and Michelle very briefly considers saying "the crotch", but decides that this is probably a time to be serious, and besides, that's probably not the right answer anyway.

"Hm…I don't know; their wallets?" She suggests, and grabs the front of her costume and drags her in towards him, shaking her slightly.

"Gordon isn't a Wall Street man; it's their _friends_ and **_family_**. Use your _head_." He lets go of her, shoving her back against her side of the van, and she rubs her chest a bit, before feeling something loose. She reaches into her costume and feels around for the loose object, and blanches when she pulls out a grenade pin. A **_loose_**_ grenade pin_.

Joker sees it a second after she holds it up to stare at it, blankly.

He lunges for her, shoving his hand down her shirt with no qualms, grabs the live grenade and leans out the driver's window, tossing it out into traffic behind them. A scant second later there's an explosion, a rather large one, and the van tips from the concussive force, skating across the sidewalk on its side until it hits the curb and slowly flips again, coming to a rest upside-down. Michelle is pinned against the roof of the van, which is now the bottom of it, by Joker landing on top of her. The other two thugs are groaning, crumpled in a pile off to Michelle's left, and the driver is swearing loudly.

"Ugh…" Michelle moans, trying to shove Joker off of her. He punches her in the side of the head, hard, and then sits up, rolling off of her. He kicks the back doors of the van, but they're stuck on the curb; he grabs the Tommy gun from Michelle and slams the butt of the gun into the window of the doors on the back of the van, breaking it out, trying to knock as much sharp glass away as he can. Michelle is already sitting up, ignoring the pulsating pain in the side of her head, and watching Joker crawl through the window, feet-first, and stagger off a few paces away from the van. Michelle crawls through after him, and when she tries to stand, she loses her balance and staggers towards him, grabbing a hold of his purple coat to try and steady herself.

**"Get off me!!"** He growls loudly, twisting and landing a nasty haymaker to the left side of her face. It hits hard enough for her to hit the concrete, and she goes dizzy for a minute, trying to regain herself. When she can, she sits up again, feeling horribly guilty for screwing things up for Joker, and doesn't even put a hand to the side of her face that now pulses with intense pain as she watches him surveying the decimation behind their van. The grenade landed in the middle of busy traffic; cars are blown to pieces, there's a school bus that's been knocked on its side, pedestrian cars are flipped upside down much like theirs is. The thugs are calling out that they think they've broken something; maybe one of them says that, and the other one says he's stuck under the first one; she can't hear them that well.

Joker is giggling, quietly, as he surveys the damage, the people crying for help, the sound of sirens in the distance. He turns and drags Michelle up by the front of her costume, smiling, practically beaming. "You're _deadly_." He drags her around to see all the damage, and she doesn't quite notice all the gasoline puddling around the various broken vehicles, including their van, or the fact that the Joker is striking a match and pressing the end of it into her hand.

"Cheers." He says in her ear, before stepping back quite a few paces and jerking her hand forward, making her throw the match. It ignites the gas and the entire wreckage scene goes up in flames in seconds, and Michelle isn't moving of her own accord, can barely think; can barely hear anything amid all the agonized screams and the sounds of fire. But she does hear the Joker laughing hysterically in her ear, can feel him dragging her along into a run down an alleyway as the flames lick at their boots, and as the fire hits more gas tanks and there's another explosion not too far behind them, and the heat rushes after them like a wall and it blows her hair back and in her face; his is too short. She looks back, in terror, just in time to see the driver of their van screaming at them seconds before their van goes up in flames too, and she watches the man burned alive and disintegrated in seconds, before the force of the explosion knocks them down to the ground of the alleyway and her hands come up over her head. Her vision is fuzzy and the explosion was so loud that her ears are ringing and all the noises she hears sound like they're coming in through thick cotton.

Joker is still laughing, though, and she hears that so clearly. He's laughing so hard she wonders if he's even taken a breath in the last five minutes. She's terrified, numb; can only think about how many people she's just inadvertently killed. Police sirens wail at their backs, fire truck sirens and ambulance sirens too, and Joker rolls to his feet and drags her along running with him, and his laughing dies down somewhat to what sounds like coughing or very dry laughing; it's hard to tell.

"This is what you've been missing!" He shouts to her, as his ears are probably ringing too, and he sounds so damn gleeful and happy in the hell that Michelle created herself that for a minute, she gives in to the hysteria and the mad happiness, and she starts laughing with him. The sound of their howling rings through the alleyway, then turns to coughing, and then, painful wheezing on her part from sucking in the dry, hot air, and they giggle the rest of the way to the other side of the alleyway and into a street, where her appearance, which is very windblown and harangued, gets a car to stop for her, a black minivan. A man leans out the window, his wife in the passenger's seat, and they ask her what's wrong, but she can't hear them and doesn't understand what they say to her because she's so caught up in this addictive feeling, the disregard for thought and plans and morals and everything, the drug of pure unbridled emotion. Its only seconds after they stop that Joker strides up to the driver's window and, before the man can gun the engine, shoves a knife into the his neck and drags him out of the car, while the woman screams bloody murder. Michelle throws Joker her pistol and he puts a bullet into the screaming woman's head to silence her, and it's then that they notice the completely terrified little boy, no older than nine or ten, sitting in the back seat, staring at the two painted monsters giggling like psychopaths.

"Have a nice day, runt!" Michelle giggles, breaking the window to the kid's seat with her t pistol's butt, grabbing him by the face, and dragging him out to the concrete next to his parent's corpses as the two psychos jack the car and go squealing down the street, caught up in their own mad reveries.


	22. Attacks

She doesn't know if he has any sort of idea how they're going to finish this goal of his, but she knows that she's going to help him do whatever he wants to try.

Michelle, as Schwarzwald, hangs her head out the window of their stolen car as she drives like a madman, her mind a haze of impulses and desires. She doesn't care about consequences right now; she doesn't care about anything at all. There's something about the Joker, now sprawled in the back seat and giving her directions now and then, his voice still relatively light and cheery, that compels her, somehow, to do as he does, feel as he does. His mood is like the weather; when it's good, everyone's happy. But when it's bad…

You just pray that the storm doesn't cause too much damage.

"Stop here," He tells her, and she slides to an easy stop in front of two unmasked men. They wave rubber clown masks to show who they are and Joker slides up into the passenger's seat, the two thugs that left the van earlier on sliding in back.

"What happened to the van?" One asks, almost hesitantly, and only gets a chortle in response.

"Nothing important. Drive." He tells Michelle, and she, not knowing where he wants her to go, pulls into the street again and just drives. Her makeup is smearing from the sweat on her brow, and she haphazardly wipes running paint away from her eyes, as it's rolled dangerously close to them and she doesn't need to get stinging grease paint in her eyes while driving, before glancing over to Joker.

"Where to, boss?" She asks, casually, and he ignores her while leaning back to look at the thugs.

"You two," He points at them, and they perk up as they straighten their masks again. "Are the fireworks ready?" One thug looks down at the duffle bag Michelle never noticed that they were carrying, zipping it open and looking inside.

"We got three more charges."

"Good." Joker sits back in his seat, casually rubbing a bloodstain off the windshield with his thumb. "Since the cops are going to be preoccupied with our little _diversion_," He glances to Michelle, before back to the bloodstain, "We shouldn't have trouble finishing up. Drive down to the first light, take a left, and keep going until I say stop." He tells Michelle, casually, and she does so, wondering what's going to happen later on tonight. The sun is setting right now, actually, and it's going to be pitch-black soon. The night makes her slightly nervous, but Gotham's so bright that she's usually fine if it's in a nicer, well-lit part of the city.

When she stops where he tells her to, the thugs grab something from the bag and casually walk out towards a building that Michelle recognizes as a very large day care center. People are going to be picking up their kids soon after a long day of work. Michelle herself is too hopped-up on adrenaline to really work this out, and merely taps her hands on the dash while she waits for the two to get back. "Why are we doing these ourselves?" She asks, after ten or so minutes of waiting, and glances over at Joker.

"No greater teacher than _experience_." He responds, before cracking his neck. "It's been a while since I've done anything, anyway; need to get back into the motions. Arkham's pretty…restrictive with its _guests_." It's now that the two thugs come back, without the thing they went in with, and she drives again to the next spot she's told to go. The thugs leave to set up whatever they're setting up at a building fully lit up, and apparently full of people. It looks like there's a big party happening inside. Michelle, after waiting for five more minutes through thick silence, can't help but ask.

"Hey, what was it like? Arkham, I mean." She asks, glancing sidelong at him, and he laughs very slightly.

"Stuffy. Sterile. Drugged. What you'd expect of a giggle farm." Joker looks over and sees her waiting for more detail. "What, you expected something _amazing_? It's an asylum, not a birthday party." He chides her at the end, and she glances into the rearview mirror as the thugs sit back down. She drives to the last spot, a retirement home about the same size as the daycare and the building with the partygoers, and now Michelle realizes that they're all about the same size, and the thugs get out doing whatever they're going to do.

"So…heard you escaped." She asks, leaning on the steering wheel. "How'd you manage that? Can you tell me?" She watches as Joker crosses his arms over his chest, closing his eyes.

"Hm…no."

That answers that question. The rest of the wait is in silence, before the thugs come back, smack the top of the car, and walk back into the building with masks on, and Joker directs her to a derelict old building in the warehouse district, windows cracked and busted and rats and cockroaches the only things that dared live in the dangerous old building. Now the only things that dare wait there are rats, cockroaches, a stray bird or two, an escaped mental patient, a Stockholm-afflicted accomplice who may or may not be losing her mind, and three clown-masked thugs that have been waiting there for them the entire time. Michelle asks one of the thugs for a briefing on what he knows, and he dismissively tells her that they're waiting for Joker to pull the pin and start the entire 'operation', if it can even be called that. They wait for five minutes, seemingly at random, before a thug from somewhere else radios in and tells them that they're all set to go, and so are the others.

"Let's start the party," Joker mumbles, taking the radio and beginning to narrate; it almost looks like he's talking into a walkie-talkie, except for the noises on the other end being loud, as if the entire thing were jimmy-rigged to a speaker system. From the sparse moments that he's not talking, Michelle can hear whimpering and crying from someone else in the background.

"Hello, good people of Gotham, and welcome to our little game. I'm happy that we've got so many _players_." He lets his thumb off the button and hears people crying, and Michelle can catch that it sounds all jumbled together, like there's more than one radio on the same frequency. "You can even say hello to the police, since we're on the same channel. Feel free to do so. Anyway," He paces around as he speaks, and Michelle tries to fix her makeup in the reflection of herself in what's left of a window, "We're going to play a game. I have five buildings rigged with enough explosives to blow them to Metropolis, and I'll even tell you, good police officers listening in, where they are. But, and there's _always_ a but," Michelle notices that even though he's pretty crazy, and very unpredictable, and incredibly dangerous, he's actually a good public speaker. Weird. "I'm going to give you an address once every five minutes. After I say an address, I have the bomb for that building armed and you have five minutes before it blows. All of the buildings are five minutes away from Gotham PD, by the way. You can go after the first building I say, and sacrifice the others, or you can wait for me to tell you where a more _important_ building is, and listen to the others blow sky high while you wait. And you're only going to be able to save one of the buildings, because after anyone so much as steps foot inside one of them, then I let that one go and I destroy all the others right then and there. Anyone walks out of a building and I destroy it anyway, and we continue with the other four." When he lets the button go, shrieks of terror cut in for that second. "Ready to hear what the buildings are? One is a daycare with lots of children and their parents, one is a busy clinic, one is full of rich partygoers that donate to the police department on a regular basis, one is a homeless shelter filled with the unfortunate and downtrodden, and the last…is a police department. Now, let's see who Gotham's 'guardians' find the most _valuable_." He lets his thumb off the button and instantly, a cacophony of screams of terror, cries and pleas for help, and alarmed police officers sound out.

"How do you know that the people themselves aren't going to run away?" Michelle asks, glancing back at him, and Joker tosses the radio at one of the thugs.

"Because there are goons there, keeping them in."

"But why are the goons even staying in the building? Don't they want to leave so they don't die?" She asks, and for some reason, the children crying in the background of the haze of noise from the radio is making her feel sort of sick. Joker glances sideways at her as he paces, smiling wryly.

"They've been told that after I pick a building, they've got a minute to leave."

"Are you going to give them that minute?" Michelle turns around, after having been tracing the tattoo on her face, and Joker shrugs.

"_Maybe_." He smiles at her, and the way he says the word is chilling. She looks out the broken window, and realizes that they can see every building from where they are.

"You know they're probably going to figure out that we're in the middle of all the buildings, right?"

"That, Shorts, is why we have these fine gentlemen." He gestures to the thugs with the heavy weaponry while he takes the radio from one of them and starts again. Michelle is wondering if she should change her alter-ego's name to something that Joker can remember. She decides that she will; Schwarzwald is cool, to her at least, but it's just too hard to remember for some people and nobody's ever going to fear her if they don't even know who she _is_.

"Have we made a decision? I hope so; these people are getting antsy, aren't they?" Joker cuts her thoughts as he starts speaking again, letting his finger off the button long enough to hear wild sobbing from at least one of the targets. "The first building is the homeless shelter, Heaven's Little Helpers," He laughs at that, a bit, "on the corner of Licell Street and Lorelei Avenue. Are the bums worth the others' lives? _I_ _wonder_." The radio goes off and there's loud noise of police officers shouting insults at Joker, the man himself picking up a detonator and arming it, and talking hurriedly with other police officers through their radios, and people in the background sobbing. Someone is screaming, 'Screw the hobos; we're the ones that actually contribute to the damn city!', and others are cheering in agreement. Michelle grimaces in disgust; she remembers why she doesn't trust people anymore, and it's because when they're under the microscope, this is what they are. Rats.

What new name is she going to have? Hysteria? No, that's way too obvious. Harley? It's too esoteric. Salt 'n Peppa? She snorts in muffled laughter at the idea, and Joker stares at her like she's insane for a moment, before speaking into the radio again.

"Hm? No love for the homeless? One minute." He sounds impatient, but also bored with how things are happening. Michelle is pacing just like Joker is, and it's almost jocular how they happen to be pacing in a figure eight without noticing it, both caught up in their own thoughts. Another minute passes and she hears a clicking noise about half a second before another explosion ripples out like fireworks against the wet velvet of Gotham's night, as the sun has already set. Michelle hears screams start and others silence, hostages screaming about how they should be saved. Joker starts narrating again, stopping his unconscious figure eight with Michelle to do it.

"All of you think that the police are your saviors, your protectors. But when push comes to shove, there are only a few _really_ worth saving." He narrates, staring down over Gotham City's expanse, and Michelle listens to him very quietly. "The homeless aren't worth saving. Let's see if the partiers are worth it, instead. The location? Anderson Road. Make your choice." He walks back to a molded old wooden table, ignoring the shouting and screaming and pleading from the people on the other end. Michelle stares at him as he walks, noting for the first time that while she's a cacophonic mixture of blacks and whites, patterns that hurt the eyes, he's muted dark colors that blend in. The only thing that's really striking about him in this low light is the face paint.

"Looking at something?" Joker asks, in a tone that suggests bored, barely-there curiosity. She shakes her head, before averting her eyes out the window where embers of the detonated building burn. She's shaking, very slightly, and feels a little sick to her stomach. The glee of earlier is long gone. She's so worried, or afraid, or maybe even guilty. There's no way to tell.

"Nervous?" He asks her, suddenly, and she turns to look at him. A moment of seeing him causes her to turn sheepish, lowering her eyes to the dirty glass-covered floor.

"Yeah, I guess…sorry."

"The first time is always the worst." He tells her, staring her down with a mellow, slightly thoughtful look on his painted face. She blinks, staring at him with slight confusion. She doesn't quite get it, but she's listening to him very intently now.

"You think, 'I can't do this sort of thing. This is wrong. This is what killers and crazies and psychos do. I'm not one of _them_. I'm not a **monster**'." He folds his hands in his lap, as if he were a professor at a college giving a lecture to a student, and Michelle listens intently enough to play the student part. "But you don't stop. You _can't_. And the more you do it…the easier it gets." His tone rises slightly at the last part, and Michelle can't tell if it's slight hysteria or just excitement, or if he's just playing with her.

"You don't think of them as people, after long enough. They're just human shields. Fuel. Walking bombs. They're tools just waiting to be taken advantage of by capable hands. And by the end, you can do things…like this." He glances at the detonator, flips a switch, and presses a button. Another explosion tears through the Gotham night. Michelle is a shade paler by the time he finishes, and seeing this, he flashes a wolfish grin.

"Unless you saw things differently in the _first_ place. Then, it's just _funny_."

He stands, walking past her and to the large broken window, to stare out at his handiwork. "The partiers weren't worth it? I wasn't really gunning for them anyway. Next up on our list is the beloved clinic; it's full of sick and poor. Are we going to let them burn? Let's see. Umbrell Street, Saints Clinic."

Michelle watches him switch off the radio, before walking over towards her. She's instantly nervous, almost neurotic. He stares at her a moment, seeing her nervously glancing up at him now and then, before walking off to pace again. It's almost like he can't sit still for more than a minute or two.

"Why do you do it?" She asks, dumbly, and he stops and glances back, confused.

"Why?"

"Yeah, why?" She leans forward in her seat, eager to know, and he sits across from her, crossing his arms over his chest in a bored fashion, staring her down.

"Guess."

"Um…" She wasn't expecting him to deadpan that question to her, and she's got almost no idea what he could possibly want to do. All she knows is that it's chaos he excels in; she doesn't know why he does it. "For fun?" She asks, tentatively, and he expels a single, barking laugh.

"It's fun, yes, but that's not the _reason_."

"I never knew you even had a reason. Hm…is this a trick question? Is the answer, 'none'?" Michelle asks, leaning forward in her seat. He closes his eyes, shaking his head slightly. She's befuddled.

"Hm…" She thinks, putting a thumb to her lips like a child, and can't figure it out. She stares at her boots, the dizzying patterns and white-against-black-against-white-against-black of her costume. She's so entranced by it that she doesn't notice that he's moved until a gloved hand closes around her bottom jaw and pulls her head up, and she notices that he's right in her face, and terror strikes her again. Why? She's devoted to him; why should she be afraid? But she is. There's something about him that terrifies people.

"For being such an intelligent woman, you have _no_ common sense. No creativity, either." He says it in her face, and she's too entranced by the wondrous horror of being so close to him that he could snap her neck in an instant to really register anything but his eyes. "It's not about the fun, or the money, or anything so…_insignificant_."

"What is it, then?" She mumbles, because it's hard to talk with him holding her jaw almost closed, and she's sure that he can feel her pulse through his gloves. Her heart is pounding like a drum.

"It's about sending the message." He basically purrs in her ear, and the sound of it revolts her for some reason, on some primal level. Maybe it's because the Joker is personification of everything wrong with Gotham, everything dangerous about it; a disease that never goes away, no matter how hard the city tries to rid itself of him. She doesn't ask what the message is, because she can't; there's too much terror in her veins to let her do anything but stare, blankly, at him as he lets go of her and walks across the room as if nothing had just happened. A glance at the timer, a glance out the window, and another explosion goes off not too far from here.

"Sorry, clinic goers, but no dice. Two buildings left; why don't we mix things up a bit?" Joker laughs into the radio, ignoring Michelle's still-as-a-statue figure sitting in the corner of the room. "The last two spots are free game; pick which one you want to save, and the other one goes up in flames. The daycare, at Grivolgi Avenue, or the police station, at Hampton Street? Pick one; and remember, I'm watching you close, so don't cheat or they both blow."

The flash of red and blue lights light up the streets below as they seem to all rush for the same place.

"The daycare; predictable." Joker murmurs, before his attention is caught by something else. There's a person, they're too far away to have an easy to decipher gender, and they're rushing at the police station, panicked. Cars are coming up at their back, and Joker now glances between the two buildings, watching for which one they go into first. He snaps his fingers, not looking away from the scene, and a thug grabs Michelle and shoves her towards the Joker. He grabs her himself now, dragging her to the window and pressing the detonator into her hand. "_You're_ going to do this one." He says into her ear, as she's at his right side so close that he can feel the body heat off of her. She almost drops the detonator at the notice, before trying to give it back to him.

"I can't!" Michelle whines, and he notices that her hands are shaking again. It's pathetic. He puts a gloved hand on her shoulder, tightening his grip as she still tries to push it back into his hands.

"You can. One press and it's done. Do it." He growls in her ear, as the cops rush into the daycare. The lone figure is almost at the police department's door, and there are officers behind them, rushing, trying to stop them. Michelle closes her eyes tightly, shaking her head back and forth.

"No, no I-"

"If you're going to be so _useless_, then I don't _need_ you."

She freezes at the harshly spoken words, and stares, blankly, at the detonator, and then up to him again, and she's tearing up and it's so _pathetic_.

"No! I…I can…be useful…"

"Then prove it."

The lone figure throws open the doors to the police department right as a mother and child are being lead out the doors of the daycare. Michelle numbs herself completely, and pushes the button at the very bottom, the one he's been pointing to. Both buildings blast in a storm of smoke and dust and debris, and Michelle doesn't even jump as Joker laughs in her ear, deafeningly loud.

"People; you've got to love them." He states, his tone dropping to what sounds like it could either be disgust or resentment; it's hard to tell which. "They're willing to sacrifice _anyone_ else just to have what **they** want. But you already know that, don't you?" He asks Michelle, but she doesn't answer. She's pale as a sheet, and just as mute. He stares at her a moment, before growling under his breath and grabbing her by the back of her neck, dragging her towards the fire escape as red and blue flash at the bottom of the building. "Let's go; no doubt the police aren't going to be happy with us. I don't feel like talking with them, either." He drags her down, before sliding down the red ladder and to ground level, moving quickly. Michelle staggers after him, dazed; she's preoccupied with wondering how many lives she just took.

_They're willing to sacrifice anyone else just to have what they want. **But you already know that, don't you?**_

There's the thug's car parked not too far away, and it's a black van. Roomy enough for everyone to sit comfortably in it, while the driver takes a shortcut to twist around the cops and get away from the wreckage scene. They killed so many people tonight, innocent people, fucking _kids_, and they get away without so much as a slap on the wrists. Michelle's now very sure that there's no God. But she knows, for sure, that there's a devil; he's sitting across from her in the van, looking at his gloves disinterestedly.

* * *

**((So, how was the first attempt at a real act of chaos? I admit, I'm not very good at trying to think these things out.))**


	23. Schemes

**((This is probably the only chapter that's going to be the reason I had to bump up the rating.))**

**

* * *

**

She's been in her room alone for…what, two days? It's kind of annoying.

Joker sits in his office, sharpening one of his knives. It's a time killer while he waits for another good idea to come up. There are newspapers scattered around messily, as if someone had randomly thrown them after they were done reading them. A good two days of media circus, crying families, and no Michelle for him to torment about it.

She was so difficult. Could not, just could **not** lose that stupid sense of justice or morality or _conscience_ or whatever it was. Things would be a lot easier if she could.

Well, she's not too important right now. If he needs her later, then he'll just drag her by the hair wherever he wants to go until she decides to cooperate. Easy as that.

* * *

Michelle, meanwhile, is sitting in the corner of her small room, having an attack of conscience. Belatedly, but still there. How many people did she kill? Just because she's a selfish bitch? Just because she can't stand to be alone? Just because she wants to be useful to, of all people, the _Joker_? She killed kids and parents and ruined families and destroyed lives and…and…

"Oh _gawd_…" Her head is in her hands, face paint washed off, the star tattoo is still dark and vivid against her pale skin, and she's definitely going insane with guilt. The door to her room isn't locked, not anymore, but she doesn't want to go out there because if she does, she'll see Joker and he'll make sure to give her hell about it. She could sit through when he killed the other people, because she could tell herself that she couldn't stop him. It wasn't her fault. She had no choice. She knows she probably didn't have a choice in pushing the button either.

But then, there's always the fact that if she refused to do it, he would've done it instead. Those people would've still died, but their blo…burned ashes wouldn't be on her hands right now. On the other hand, she'd probably be dead. Or missing some part of her body.

Michelle stands up again, pacing around her room. She's thinking about her choice. Again. Joker says that the first time is the hardest, but can she survive a second time? No, she doesn't think so. And then a second idea comes to her. A crazy, crazy idea.

Does she really need this life? Need the chaos and the death and the guilt? Need _him_? Could there possibly be another chance at life outside the walls?

Another chance at life?

The idea is quickly brushed aside the first time it comes along, but it doesn't ever really leave Michelle's mind. She wonders, ignores it, wonders again. An hour later, she's been thinking about it so much. The possibility of being wanted, needed, loved. It's too strong a pull for her to ignore. Can she find someone in the big city of Gotham that actually wants her? Besides a psychopath that's probably going to kill her one day, and probably doesn't want her so much as want to destroy her?

It's a terrifying idea. It's a wonderful idea. Wonderful to imagine having something worth living for again, it's been so long since she's actually had someone to trust and confide in. Well, it's been so long since she's actually had someone she can now trust to trust. She can learn to trust again. And it's so terrifying to actually imagine having to somehow escape Joker. How's she going to do that? He has the entire factory under his thumb. Everybody works for him. Everyone's terrified of him. If she's going to escape, she's going to have to somehow dodge all of his men, Joker himself, jack one of the cars, and disappear into Gotham. Nobody's going to help her, at least, not any of his thugs. So if Michelle tries it, she's going to have to do it all for herself.

How the hell?

She sits down, and wonders. Should she? Shouldn't she? Can't help but go in circles. She should; she should go and try and escape this, make amends for the lives she's taken. Try and live an honest life, and die guilt-free when Joker finds her again and rips her to pieces. She shouldn't; she can't make it out anyway, there's probably nobody else that cares about her but Joker, and she should probably just get over the guilt and get on with this new life.

She's tired. Michelle lies down on the probably deadly mattress, forgoing a coat or cover or anything because she just doesn't care anymore. She has a dream that night that she can't remember in the morning, but when she does wake up, her mind is made. She's going to escape and try again. After all, there's only so much terror and trouble and heartache that one person can be inflicted with, before something wonderful happens to make up for it all, right?

Right?

* * *

Mainly unnoticed, Michelle slips through the factory building, taking account of everything. The goons are at the front and back doors, armed. The bomb-rigged SUV and the bomb-less black van sit out front. They're probably a few miles away from the edge of Gotham's busiest area, though she's just estimating and can't be sure. There are cameras everywhere; old ones that still work, new ones that have been installed. They watch almost everything happening in the factory. Joker probably keeps his eye on the camera feed. She needs to put him out of commission if she's ever going to escape. After that, she's going to need to get the keys off of him, slip past the guards somehow, drive into the city, and virtually disappear.

Disappearing is going to be the easiest part.

The guards can be slipped past if she just has a mask, and normal clothes. She can talk her way out of it if she just makes her voice deeper. Everything but the last part is sure-fire. But Joker, he's going to be the hardest part. She could try to get out when he sleeps, but when he does, it's completely random and impossible to plan out. And even when he's in his room, one can hear him walking around sometimes, so there's no way to know if he's actually asleep or watching the cameras. She's heard stories about goons trying to get into his room as quietly as possible while he's asleep and he wakes up just like that, so he's probably a really light sleeper too.

This is going to be so damn hard. She not only has to wait for him to be asleep, or unconscious at the least, but she needs to pull the keys off of him. He does keep them on his person, so nobody steals the car and causes trouble. So she needs to get him either completely unconscious, or really, really deeply asleep.

She checks out the goons in the building, asking them if they have any sleeping pills on them. She says that she's not sleeping too good nowadays. They laugh, and they tell her that nobody sleeps too good nowadays. So that's a no.

She can try and knock him out, but with how fast and strong he is, that's almost impossible for someone like her. And there'd be no way to be sure that it'd actually work, even if she got the drop on him. If she tried, and failed, he'd probably laugh at her and then beat the shit out of her. Maybe just go ahead and kill her. She can't risk that, because even if he doesn't kill her, he'll never trust her out of someone's sight again and it's all ruined.

Third option: She needs to tire him out. Somehow. Maybe…she can get him to the point of exhaustion…running around? Physical exertion? No, he'll just have somebody else do any large, exhausting amount of work. It has to be something that he'll do, by himself, with nobody else.

She's got one thing in mind, and she's really, really hoping that something else comes up too. Maybe she can just distract him for long enough…no, that's nowhere near reliable enough. Frame a goon into doing something that Joker would love to punish himself? Great idea, except that unless he's in a really good mood, or a really bad mood, Joker would probably just stab him in the eye or slit his throat and get it over with.

There's really only one option left. Only one that she can actually accomplish single-handedly, anyway; she doesn't trust the goons enough to try and get them in on her plan. Who pays them? Joker does. Who's trying to get them on Joker's shit list? She is. It's not hard to figure out who they'll side with, and who they'll tattle on.

"Ugh, I don't want to do this!" She snaps, at the ceiling of her room, once she gets back from snooping. She has one option left, because if she waits too long, Joker'll come up with another idea and Michelle will be dragged off on another soul-destroying adventure in the name of chaos. She's so desperate. She needs to do it tonight. And so Michelle takes a deep breath, and swallows any self-worth she may have left, as she prepares to start this rapid, haphazard and probably ultimately futile plan into action.

* * *

Joker is headed to his room for another quick hour or two of sleep, before he sets his next good idea into motion. It's completely random, like all the others, and very roundabout in what he's trying to accomplish. Not a plan, never a plan, because he doesn't need those. He's got nothing but a goal, and a bunch of chaotic ideas that might or might not eventually cause the goal to be fulfilled.

When he pushes open the door, however, he's just a bit surprised by who's standing in there, looking around. Michelle's out of her room, again, and poking around his. How long has she been here? She's just reading parts of newspapers that are haphazardly strewn about the room, her white-and-black costume standing out against the dull concrete tones. She hears the door open and glances back at him, curiously; after a moment, she smiles. Too warmly.

"Having fun?" He asks, keeping calm about this. Why's she here? She avoids him most of the time. He wants to know why. She turns around, facing him, her hands behind her back.

"A little."

"Any reason you're in _my_ room?"

"Not much…" Her voice is soft, calm; soothing, almost, as she walks over to him. He doesn't move, because he has no idea where she's going with this. "But my room is cold."

"That's too bad. What are you doing _here_, again?" He asks, almost tersely, as she walks right up to him. Very close. Too close. She leans onto the balls of her feet, leaning upwards slightly, close to his face.

"I told you. I'm cold." She breathes the words, vivid green eyes half-lidded, a slight smile on her lips, and he just stares, leaning back slightly.

"Then go lay on a heating vent." There are heating vents around here, and they're nice and toasty. Thugs warm their hands over them all the time. Joker's room isn't any warmer than hers is, anyway. He doesn't get what she's getting at until she actually steps forward, closing the space in between them, and leans her body against his, hands on his upper arms. He flattens a hand on her chest and shoves her back a step or two, walking past her.

"If you want that, then there are plenty of other men willing to give it." He just wants to get his sleep, and then start setting up tomorrow morning. She won't be deterred, though, and ghosts his steps, before wrapping her arms around his torso and leaning against his back.

"Those are just guard mutts. Puppies, really. I don't want a mutt." She says it softly, tightening her grip on him. "I want a real alpha. Top dog." She sounds like a whore. A cheap hooker with bad pickup lines. He shrugs her off, though it's more like he grasps her wrists and pries them off of him before jerking back against her and knocking her over, and heads for the mattress on the floor. She's not a good slut.

"What, can't handle women?" She taunts, standing and dancing around in front of him with the back of her ankles against the mattress, leaning forward against his chest again. Her arms come around his neck and she presses herself against him fully, and Michelle offhandedly notes that he's really warm. "Or is Batman the only one you want?"

"Can't you take a _hint_?" He says, incredibly tired of this, his hand already wrapping around her throat. It's not that he doesn't like sex; it's that he doesn't have time for it. It's easier to just ignore those sorts of compulsions and focus on the work instead. Michelle, however, is making that incredibly difficult. He has a doctor waiting for him in Arkham that's much the same way, though she knows when stop means stop. He does notice, however, that he's been choking Michelle out and she's turning kind of blueish colored. He loosens his grip enough for her to breathe, and she sucks in a gasping breath when he does before beginning to cough under her breath, and leans in her face. "Are we done?"

"Never." She replies, before leaning up and kissing him. Kissing. _Him_. She's gone insane. Michelle knows that either it works or he beats the ever loving hell out of her for a stunt like this. He doesn't move for a split second, probably out of shock, before shoving her. She doesn't let go of him, however, and when he shoves her, she drags him down with her, onto his ratty mattress. When he shoved her he bit her lip, hard, and now that he's got nowhere else to look but her face, he sees that she's put on her face paint again, and the usually delicate, clean lines of it are blurred. Any other time, she paints her lips a delicate, cherry red, and the lines are clean and never smudged. Now, she's not just wearing her own makeup, but his too, and the cherry red is smothered with darker, messy blood red, and the clean lines are smeared and blurred. Blood runs down her chin from where he's bitten her. She's staring at him, closely now, searching for anger or imminent fury, green eyes wide. The heat between them is amazing.

All of a sudden he growls, low and in his throat, and kisses _her_ this time, though it's hard and vicious and not at all romantic. Michelle knows that she's won this battle of the wills, though whether, in the long run, she's actually won or just lost in a different way is undecided. She doesn't have time to really think about it, however, because he's focusing on working through this fast, already working his hands up under her costume top and pulling it off while continuing to run his tongue along the smooth inside of her cheeks, almost curiously. She jumps at the cold air, this factory is so fucking cold, and he breaks the kiss long enough to growl in her hair, ripping off her bra and grabbing the waist of her pants, already pulling.

"Remember that _you_ started this."

* * *

About an hour after she hears his breathing slow down, as if he were sleeping deeply, Michelle quietly sits up and groans under her breath. She's so sore, and she's going to be even sorer tomorrow. Her hair is a mess, there's pulsing pain on her shoulders and neck on chest where he's bitten her, hard, and she halfheartedly notes that there are thin slits on her arms and her legs where he cut her with a knife. When did he get the knife out? She can't remember. She's going to have trouble walking later on, too. Rough bastard. Fucking animal. She can't think of enough derogatory terms for him, while pulling on the long purple coat at the foot of the mattress.

She pulls on her bra and underwear again, keeping the coat on, and then sneaks over to his pants thrown near the door of the bathroom and digs through them, jabbing her fingers with a knife once or twice, before finding the set of keys she needs. She then quickly hunts down the top and bottom of her costume, and it's a little hard to find them because they've been ripped off in a hurry and thrown across the room, and sneaks out of the room with a last glance to Joker. He looks calm, and she hopes he's tired, because fuck is _she_ tired.

"Goodbye," She breathes as quietly as she dares, before slipping down the hallway, dodging the rooms where the thugs are sleeping, and back to her own room. She made sure to keep the coat on so that if anybody saw her from a distance, they'd think she was Joker and steer clear. It worked. Back in her own room, she drops the coat and grabs the civilian clothes thieved from one of the thugs' bags, and since they're men's clothes they're exactly what she needs. She keeps the bag and stuffs her costume into it, because she's very attached to this costume, and throws it over her shoulder, pulling the thug's spare rubber mask over her face. Time to escape.

Michelle swaggers down the hallway, mask over her face, and bag over her shoulder, and heads past the thugs walking the halls without trouble. She drops the purple coat in Joker's room, right next to the door, so maybe she has more time to escape later on when he's not being suspicious of why his coat is missing. Her clothes are baggy enough to hide her figure, and since she doesn't have to talk, they never know. She's heading past an open door, when she hears one call to her.

"Hey, come in man. We just startin' the game."

She freezes. Either she walks in, and possibly gets caught, or she walks past, and definitely gets caught. So she walks in, and sits down at an empty chair settled around the card table. There are three masked men sitting around the table, and they're all playing poker. They deal her cards and start the game, while Michelle tries to find an opening to escape.

"Hey, you hear?" One asks, shoving a ten dollar bill into the pot.

"Hear what?" Another asks, before laying his cards down flat on the table. "Fold."

"Pussy." The third mumbles, tossing in a chip. "What, Rocko?"

"Joker got ass." The first announces, as Michelle flinches slightly and then recovers by putting a couple dollars in the center of the table. She's no good at poker, but at least everyone has a great poker face on. One of the thugs snort, and the other shakes his head.

"That? A'course I heard that. _Everybody_ heard that."

"Have to be fucking deaf not to." The third thug mutters, staring at Michelle and then the first thug. There's no poker face to try and see through, and he cusses under his breath when he remembers that. "With that one chick, right? Mariah? Melanie?"

"Think it's Michelle." The second one states, and the first, Rocko, smacks him with his cards.

"Fuck you. Yeah, Michelle, whatever. That one with the retarded costume. Swear, she's bipolar or some shit."

"I know, right? But she's got to be out of her fucking mind to want to fuck Joker." The third one states, and Michelle herself stays silent. They all lay down their cards. The second thug wins the pot. Everyone cusses.

"Sucking up, maybe?" Michelle offers, in as deep a voice she can, and apparently, they buy it.

"Sucking something else." The third one says, and they all laugh. Even Michelle, though she forces it. Rocko deals the cards.

"Why we talking about this whore again?"

"'Cos there ain't nothing else to talk about."

"Alright, let's just ask. Would you guys fuck her?" Rocko asks, putting a five into the pot, and everyone thinks about it a moment. Michelle, though disgusted that they're talking about her like this, for a second wonders if she were a lesbian, and there were a copy of her, would she fuck herself? She then realizes that it's a completely idiotic idea and brushes it aside.

"Eh…maybe. There any other women around in this question?" The third asks, looking over his cards again.

"No, just Melanie. Michelle. Whatever."

"Eh…maybe. Depends on if she's a good fuck or not." The third says again, finally putting five dollars into the center of the table.

"Think we can assume that she is, from the fucking noise next door." The second states. "I'd fuck her, as long as Joker wasn't around."

"But Joker's fucked her already. If you fuck her, that means you're fucking Joker too."

"Oh, don't start with that shit! It don't work like that. What about you, Rocko?"

"Me? I'd fuck her. We're kind of desperate though, so our word don't really count none. I'd fuck a dog if I had a dog around here." Rocko states, before glancing up to Michelle. "What about you? Would you fuck her?"

"Me?" Michelle mumbles, dropping a twenty into the pot. "Eh…nah. We don't know if crazy is an STD."

As she says that, all the others start laughing, and after a moment, Michelle joins in. The third thug slaps her high-five.

"Heh, amen to that. We don't need anyone else as fucking psycho as Joker in Gotham; city couldn't handle it." Rocko states, before flattening his cards. Everyone else does too. Michelle is almost hesitant to lay hers down. Royal Flush.

"You're a fucking cheat!" The second snaps at her, grabbing her by the front of her shirt from across the table and dragging her towards him, a knife in his hand.

"Come on," Michelle croons, pulling her pistol from her pocket and leveling it at the second thug's head, "Let's not _fire off_ any unwarranted accusations." He lets her go, and she settles into her seat again, Rocko and the third thug sitting there. "I ain't playing for money anyway. Gotta leave, Joker's orders. You guys divvy it up." She tucks the pistol away, grabbing her bag, and turning for the door.

"Yo man," Rocko calls after her, and for a minute, she thinks she's been caught. Her long hair has been tucked into the back of her shirt, to hide it, but what if they figured out she's not a guy? She turns around, watching them.

"What?"

"You won, come get it, you lucky fucker." He gestures towards the pot, the second thug now nursing a black eye from behind his mask, and Michelle walks back hesitantly, collecting the money. "Eddie here's just a bit excitable. Arkham, yannow." Eddie glares at this from behind his mask, but says nothing. The third thug slaps her on the back.

"Good luck. Pretty cool bastard, you know. Most of the guys 'round here are uptight, nervous pricks."

"Charlie got a point," Rocko says, as Michelle tucks the money away in her pocket. She might need it later on. "We hafta be, with who we're workin' for. Joker kills two, three of us every week. Ten 'r twenty when we actually work. Our days are numbered, boys." Eddie and Charlie nod at this, gravely, and Michelle feels pity for them now. They know they're going to die, and they're such nice guys, but they probably don't have any other choice if they're already at a point low enough to come to Joker for work.

"Hey, thanks guys. Name's…Jack." Michelle tells them, almost hesitantly heading towards the door, and they nod and wave.

"See you Jack." Rocko says, and Charlie deals the cards again.

"Ya mean, 'We _hope_ we see you, Jack'."

"Oh, don't go all fucking depressing on me. When did we stop talking about the good things, like pussy?"

"Fine, why don't we talk about pussy again?"

"Let's."

"Yeah, let's talk about Rocko loving dog pussy."

"Oh _fuck you_, man."

Michelle smiles as she walks out the door, and she's a little more hopeful of finding guys like that outside Joker's influence. She walks out the front door, jingling the van's keys at the thugs guarding the door as a show of what she's going to do, and they nod, letting her through. She throws her bag into the passenger's seat and starts the van, driving away and towards the city, throwing her rubber mask into the passenger's seat when she's far enough away from the factory to relax.

She's a little more hopeful, and though she's very sore, she's looking forward to life outside. She's hopeful again.

She's turned the tables on Joker, after all; what's not to be proud of about that?


	24. Redos

She needs to become someone else. Something more. Something less. Something.

Michelle drives, and she's so stuck on the adrenaline and terror and paranoia of every car behind her (because what if they're following her? What if they are? What if, as soon as she stops, they drag her back to suffer Joker's wrath?), pulling over every mile or two just to walk along the side of the road, pacing, pulling at her hair, scratching at her skin. She should feel better now that she's escaped. Saner.

If anything, she feels even madder than before.

Her thoughts whizz by without slowing for any other thought; they stumble over each other, meld, mix. A melting pot of insanity and guilt and terror and perfect awareness of that ever-fragile line that separates the sane from the mad. Of all the times she has her mental breakdown, it's now. Not when she's trapped under constant threat of death, not when she's double crossed by the one man she thinks loves her, not when she presses the switch that takes the lives of innumerable parents and children. No. It's on the escaping ride, on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Gotham City.

Her body still aches. She feels filthy. Like a whore. Like a cheap whore. There are no words to describe how badly she wants to shower, and get the scent of dispassion and gasoline out of her hair and remnants of sweat off of her skin. Her hands, though, are shaking too hard for her to drive without sending herself into a ditch. An eighteen wheeler roars by and Michelle heaves, retching. She's sobbing, tears staining the makeup, a mixture of smeared blood reds and brighter cherry reds and whites and blacks and even grays, the now thick tears dripping down to the ground. She can't handle this.

Why is she crying?

Why are you crying?

Why am I crying?

I don't _know_.

That's the only answer she has. She doesn't know why she's crying, why she's sick, why she's so afraid and why she's so regretful. Why she's not happy. She can't even think coherently, much less riddle out why she's so…everything.

An hour later, she's in her stolen van again, driving into Gotham. She ditches it in the slums and grabs her stolen coat, wrapping it tight around her as she stalks through the rain. She needs a new identity. A new face. A new hair color. A new name. A new wardrobe. A new car. A new job. A new life. She can't go to the police. No police. They'll find out who she is. They'll out her. He'll find her again, through them, through dirty cops. No media. They'll do the same thing, except fifty times faster. No Nathan. No James. No Michael. Nobody. Cut all ties with Michelle King. That's not her name anymore. That's not the woman walking down the sidewalk of a thick Gotham night, rain soaking through her clothes and plastering her hair to her face.

She's got two hundred dollars in her pocket and a heavy shade on her shoulders.

* * *

Six months later, a woman with honey blond hair sits in a dimly lit jazz bar in Gotham, listening to a Miles Davis cover band and sipping a scotch. She was once Michelle King, but she's been running so long that she can't even remember that name. It's written down on a piece of scratch paper still shoved deep in her pocket for when she wants to remember. All the names. All the lies. All the different faces. She can't stay in one place for too long, but she's never left Gotham; can't bear to tear herself away from this dirty, dangerous city.

She turns around in her seat, fingers tracing the lip of her glass, as a thick haze of smoke makes everything hazy. Her eyes are a glassy blue, a hard change with her naturally green eyes. Not impossible, though. Contacts. She's gotten rid of her tattoo, a long, excruciating process; it was removed through laser removal techniques and for every visit to get it off, it literally felt like hot grease was being splashed onto her skin.

It was worth it, though. She's a veritable ghost; a woman without a name, haunting Gotham city, and always running. Joker has been raining hell and fire upon Gotham City ever since he got loose, pure unleaded chaos. It's always too close, too; no matter how much of a phantom she is, he's always able to root her out and she always escapes only by the skin of her teeth. It's no life. It's pure terror, twenty-four seven.

But right now, it's life. It's calm here, too, in this jazz bar, as the band starts playing Blue in Green and the nameless woman raises her cigarette to her mouth, inhaling before letting a slow, hazy cloud of smoke lift upwards towards the ceiling. She's gorgeous, because she's made sure to eliminate every trace of the meek, dull Michelle. She's worked so hard to make herself a bombshell. Blonde, big blue eyes, ruby red lipstick on full lips, and, since she's never been able to hold a tan, creamy pale skin.

Michelle King is gone, and now, there is only Julia. Her last name is never constant. She's just Julia.

Dumbly, she wonders if her hotel room is safe tonight. She's going to move again, when the week is up; one day till then. Her long black trench coat, since she's always found them so tasteful and elegant, is tied around her waist, and it hides her from easy view in the dark bar. She glances up at the bartender and pulls out her wallet, laying what she owes for the drink on the table. She hides, runs, charms her way through life. When she hears someone moving through the door, she gives no notice. Not until the chair beside her scoots, and someone settles into the seat beside her.

"I didn't expect to find a woman of your class here. What's your name?" A man says, and it's in an Italian accent. Michelle takes a sip of her scotch, ice clinking against the glass, before setting it back down and turning her head to look at the man. He's Mafia. She can tell them at first sight, now; nice suits, suave manners, the habit of throwing Italian into their regular speech to try and impress her. This one is very forward and just asks her name, instead of trying to worm his way into a conversation with her. She settles her chin against the heel of her hand, smiling very slightly at him.

"Julia."

"Beautiful name for a _very_ beautiful woman, _miei caro_." He very softly brushes the back of his hand along her left arm, and she chuckles very quietly.

"You have no idea how many times I've heard that bit of Italian, mister…?"

"Ah, I didn't know. And Cane. Alfonso Cane." He's very charming, and Julia isn't sure if it's genuine or fake as he takes her hand from her glass of scotch, running his thumb over the back of it. "Would you like to maybe have dinner somewhere?"

"You're very forward. What would my mother say if I said yes?" She laughs, and it's very quiet and reserved.

"I don't know, what would she say?" Alfonso leans in, speaking softly, and Julia turns away to sip at her scotch.

"Nothing, I suppose. She's dead."

It was rhetorical. Alfonso could kick himself for not noticing that. To try and salvage the encounter, he lays his hand over hers, smiling as smoothly as he can.

"In any case, about dinner…?"

"I…suppose." She smiles again, a very slight one, and finishes her scotch on the rocks with another swallow, pulling her black purse over her shoulder. Alfonso stands as well, walking with her to the door as Blue in Green comes to the ending piano solo, and Julia remains silent. She's still up to her old tricks, conning expensive men out of their money, except instead of having Nathan to fall back on, as a support cushion of sorts, she has nothing to fall back on but concrete. So she makes herself beautiful and uses her appearance as a bargaining tool instead of the promise of money.

Alfonso takes her to a very nice restaurant, and they find out that they have absolutely nothing in common. Then he drives her out to a nice hotel, and they have loveless sex. After he falls asleep, Julia steals the money out of his wallet, which is two thousand (why the hell does a man have two thousand dollars on him anyway?), and tucks it away in her own pocket. It occurs to her that, since this is her main scheme, she's kind of a prostitute now, and as she sneaks out the door, dressed, Julia wonders if she'd have stooped this low six months ago. Probably not.

It's not like she has a choice anymore, though. She's on the run, constantly, and can't hold a job because of it. So what if she's a very beautiful, very pricy, thieving hooker? They're not being hunted by the Joker. So fuck anyone that judges her for what she's done and what she's doing. She sneaks out of the hotel and heads down the street, flagging down a passing car and hitching a ride to her part of Gotham.

* * *

A week later, she's staring out of her new hotel room's window, a cigarette in between her pale fingers. That two grand had been great for her; it was a cheap hotel, but it was enough for her, and she could stare down through her second story window and watch the cars roll by. She reaches into her pocket and unfurls the curled piece of paper with a name on it. Michelle King. She smiles, slightly, before hearing a noise out her window and stuffing the paper back into her pocket, leaning out to look.

It's a black car. And the guys stepping out of it have nice suits on. And they're loading pistols.

"Damn." Julia breathes, as they walk in the door, hiding their guns. She knows they're mafia, she can tell. And she thinks that Alfonso is a bit sore about having his wallet thieved by a conniving hooker. How they hunted her down, she has no idea, but her paranoia is spiking. They're coming for her, they've got to be. There are footsteps approaching outside her door, and Julia crawls out the window with her purse under her arm, onto the fire escape. There are a few feet, maybe two, between her windowsill and the fire escape, but she crawls over deftly and then rushes upwards, as the door to her room comes open. She runs up the fire escape as a man leans out her window and catches sight of her, yelling. She turns onto the roof right as a bullet pings off of the metal hand rail right next to her, and after another climb, is on the roof.

So they want her dead. Why so sore, Alfonso? It's not like she hasn't done it to other, smarter men.

Julia runs down the rooftop, heels clicking as she does, before bullets are ricocheting off of the roofing near her feet and she's running harder. She reaches the end of the roof and, without anywhere else to go, slips down the side of the roof and drops, rolling when she hits the small grassy lawn around the building. They look down from the roof as she's disappearing down a small alleyway, a splotch of blond against dim brick walls and bland gray concrete. One of them cusses, before noticing something on the roof of the building. A scrap of paper that's fallen out of her pocket, apparently. He picks it up, reading off the name.

"Michelle King? What the…" He hears police sirens and quickly runs down to ground level with his partner, getting into the car and disappearing just like Julia did. He dials a number on his phone, before a man picks up.

"Yes?"

"Boss, we found her…"

"Is the whore dead?"

"No."

"Well why the hell not?!"

"She's too…fast. But we found something else."

"What the hell am I paying you bastards for…ugh, what did you find?"

"Julia? She ain't Julia. Michelle King."

"I've heard that somewhere before…Michelle…King…oh my god." Alfonso mutters in shock, as he recognizes the name. Everyone recognizes the name. She's the woman that escaped from Joker. Twice. Of course, the public thinks she's dead; disappeared. The Mafia, however, know that she didn't die, she ran off again. And they know that Joker's been hunting her down.

Alfonso laughs to himself. "I see, I see. Thanks." He hangs up on his thug, before dialing another number.

"Hey…Rocko? Tell your boss Joker I've got something I think he'll want to know about. A ghost."

* * *

**((So, what do you guys think about the timeskip? I thought it'd kind of be appropriate, so it wouldn't be a disappointing 'Oh, she got away for two days but got caught again, lol' kind of thing. Kind of want to go for a noir feel, though; how did that go over? I want to know if I suck, of course. :D))**


	25. Captures

She's lost her name.

It's something so insignificant in the long run, but it's so damn important to her as she, for the millionth time, digs through her coat's pockets again. She wants to find it, because she already forgot that very important last shred of herself. It's all she has left of her old life, before things got so complicated. She sits on the floor of a cheap motel across Gotham, where the sheets are stained and the porn is free, and puts her head in her hands. She could cry, if it wouldn't mess up her makeup.

_It's gone,_ she tells herself. _It's gone now_.

Then and there, Julia wonders if it was all worth it. Was leaving Joker worth the life she got in return? No money. No home. No friends, too dangerous. No boyfriends or husbands, too dangerous and because she's never found one that she actually cares enough about to consider marriage. She's got nothing to her name, and now, she doesn't even have her name anymore. There's nothing to her but Julia, the conniving, thieving hooker; the femme fatale that snatches wallets in the night and disappears into Gotham's depths. The woman without a last name.

**_Was it worth it? Did you find your happy life, M…M…Julia?_**

_Did I? Is this…all, is it what I wanted? No…I wanted a life. I'll never have it, either. It's all gone. I was naïve. I thought I could escape and disappear, make a new life and live happily with a man I love. I can't. I can't bring myself to trust any of them anymore, can't help but run away and never bother, never hope to stop. Joker…I'm ruined._

What is she now but a facsimile of human life? An imitation; a very pretty imitation, but still, a fake. She lives only to flee.

Julia grabs her things and stands, heading out of her motel room and out of the motel itself, walking down the steps of it and down the sidewalk. Now she's got mafia men on her tail, and they want her dead. Joker, the Mafia; why don't we just add in Colombian drug dealers and the IRA, while we're at it? She walks down the sidewalk, and begins to notice that someone follows behind her at a respectable distance, but even as she weaves through the streets, impossible patterns for anyone with a real destination, he follows. She's panicking, but it's well hidden and she merely puts a hand on her purse. A purse snatcher? Or a Mafia hit man?

She walks down an alleyway to her left, and while the man loses sight of her, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a pistol, keeping it out of sight as she walks down to the dead-end alleyway and stops. When she turns around, it's not a groomed mafia man, it's a thug, what looks like a junkie.

"Purse." He snaps, and she aims a pistol at him. After he takes a moment too long to run, she fires off a shot near his head and he turns, running off down the sidewalk. Julia drops her arm, sighing in relief, before a metallic click behind her head makes her raise her hands slowly, in a defeated manner.

"Hands in the air…good." It's a man, and his voice is deep and emotionless. The man takes Julia's pistol and instead puts his arm around her, hiding the pistol pressed against her ribs as they walk down the street.

"Mafia?" Julia asks tersely, and he makes a slight 'hm' noise.

"I thought as much." She closes her eyes, as he continues to guide her down the street. As they walk down the sidewalk, she notices that they're heading towards a black car. When he opens the door for her, she seizes the moment of distraction and twists away, ducking behind a trashcan long enough to hear a bullet ping off of the brick near her head, before barreling down the sidewalk, hurriedly. She knows that they're probably driving after her and so dodges into a small café, rushing through the building and through the back door while dodging anybody that she sees. When she emerges from the building, she knows they're not far behind and so ducks down the alleyway she emerged in, seeing a chain-link fence ahead of her. She kicks off her heels and throws them over, before painstakingly clambering over the fence and dropping, putting on her shoes again and running away about the time they're shouting after her.

"Dammit! How'd…how'd the find me?" Julia breathes, ducking through seedy back alleys and eventually finding that she's lost them. She stops running, exhausted, and now walks along the sidewalk, staring up at the sky. It was around noon when she started running; it's sundown now. She's been running for six or seven hours now, dodging into random buildings, staying there a half hour or so, before dodging out and finding another building to hide in. Bars, restaurants, strip clubs; anywhere.

"Ugh…my feet hurt…" Julia stares up at the sky, sighing. She sees the glint of a car in the corner of her eye and walks, casually, into a café, sitting down in the back corner of the room as more mafia-esque men walk in, glancing around for her. They talk to a waitress and look back when a blond slips out the back door, and they shout after her and give chase. The first walks out the back door and is immediately smacked with a garbage can lid, and he goes down like a brick. She snatches the gun off of him right as the second runs into view, and he backs up slowly when she aims it at him.

"Get…away…from…me!" Julia snarls, walking backwards slowly, before someone smashes her across the back of the head with something heavy, while pulling the gun out of her numb hands as she slumps to the ground, black spots blooming in her vision.

"You guys are fucking useless." A man says behind her, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her over his shoulder, before quickly walking to a black car and tossing her in back. The man that apparently clubbed her sits in the seat next to her, rolling her semi-conscious self onto her back.

"Hello, Ms. King. We've got somebody that wants to see you." He tells her, before wrapping her wrists up in duct tape.

"Fuckyou…" She mumbles, dizzily, and he puts another piece of tape over her mouth.

"I'd love you to, but we're busy right now." He responds, cheekily; the driver begins to…well, drive. Blood is running down into Julia's eye, and she closes it, before lapsing out of consciousness for a moment. When the car comes to a stop is when she's jolted awake again, and after a moment, the guy that clubbed her is dragging her out of her seat, an arm wrapped around her waist to support her, and he walks her into a warehouse. The door comes open and it's dim, dank, and the ceiling is dripping. Her blue eyes focus, very hazily, onto a group of people waiting inside.

"Alfonso, we got her. Hard to catch." The guy beside her says, and apparently, Alfonso is here and smirking at her battered person.

"Ah? Good. Get the little whore over here. He'll be here any minute."

He? Michelle is too dizzy to riddle it out, and merely leans against the guy guiding her, everything being hazy and hard to discern and even harder to keep track of. She still can't see out of the eye with blood in it. It's disquieting, and the lack of vision on the side Alfonso's on is very hampering.

The door opens on the other side of the warehouse, when did they start coming with two of them, and another group of people walk in, one at the forefront strolling in lazily.

"I hope we didn't keep you…_waiting_."

It's that voice. The one that snaps Julia out of any sort of haze she was in before. She shoots up, straight up, and the guy holding her is so startled that he lets her go for a moment and she's running in the opposite direction. He catches her, drags her back.

"She doesn't seem happy to see you."

"Of course not; you let a bird loose, it's really not going to want to come back to the cage, is it?" The Joker states, calmly, as he watches the woman across from him stare at him wide-eyed, still trying to scoot backwards and away from him. "Hello, Michelle. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Let's talk business." Alfonso cuts in, and Joker looks to him with a bit of annoyance.

"Fine. You know the agreement of ours; immunity…at least, as much as a man of my line of work can provide…to the Cane family."

"Agreed. Take the woman, and watch out; sneaky whore." He snaps his fingers and the man beside Julia drags her to the middle of the room, where a clown-masked thug grabs her by the back of the neck and drags her back to their side. She curls away from Joker, who ignores her for a moment before the two groups agree and both turn away, walking out towards their respective vehicles outside. The thug shoves her over and Joker catches her, an arm around her shoulder and guiding her out the door and towards another van, which seems to be his favorite sort of vehicle.

"Michelle, it's been too, too long. How's life on the outside been treating you?" He asks, casually, before noticing that she can't answer. He rips off the tape and lets it flutter to the ground as she coughs, her lips burning now, and then looks up to him.

"T…para…noid…" She mumbles, still trying to pull away from him. He laughs, tossing her into the van, and this marks the third time that she's been forcefully shoved into a van of some sort, against her will. It's getting too common for her tastes. He settles in on his own side as the van begins to move.

"You know, you caused me a lot of trouble, running off when you did. I was about to use you that next morning, for another idea of mine. But…I guess we can just make up for lost time." Joker notices that she's looking much different, and Julia's a bit offset by how curiously he's looking at her now. "You've changed."

"W…what?"

"You heard me, didn't you? Ah, I know you did." He smiles, wryly, and it's a grotesque thing because of his scars. "I said," He reaches over, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and dragging her over towards him, so that she's kneeling right in front of him, "You've changed how you look. I bet you were just getting yourself ready to see me again, right?" He's in a very good mood, Julia notices, and she's secretly thankful for that.

"Um…no, of course not." She closes her eyes and sighs the last part, momentarily forgetting that she's in the presence of a very temperamental madman. He knots his fingers in her blond hair and pulls hard enough for her eyes to shoot open and her head to jerk at an angle so that she's looking up at him, and he's still smiling.

"Pay _attention_. And that's too bad. I had fun at our last little…get together." He winks at her and she closes her eyes and sighs again, quieter this time, as he lets go of her hair and pulls her into the seat next to him. "Really, I did. We should do that again sometime."

"I thought you didn't like me trying that. You nearly strangled me last time."

"I was tired, wanted to get to sleep. A woman throwing herself at you is kind of annoying when you're tired."

"I wouldn't know." Julia sighs, leaning her elbows on her knees and putting her head into her hands. He sets his arm on her shoulder and pulls her against him, and he still reeks of gasoline like always. It's weird how he's acting, though; he should be angry with her, should be killing her. No, he's acting like they're old friends.

"That's a shame. Anyway, Michelle," Joker says cheerily, as the van comes to a stop and he guides her out of it and to the ground outside, "We need to get to business. Come on, let's go." He walks her up to their new hideout, a derelict warehouse building, and she's not at all uptight about walking with him to the very back, into a large room with concrete walls and floors. No, it's only when he walks around behind her and clicks handcuffs onto one wrist while ripping off the duct tape that she gets nervous again.

"What are we doing?" Julia asks, as he guides her towards a chair and has her sit down. He closes the other handcuff to the chair, before waltzing over to the back of the chair and quickly tying her up with rope he's hidden there.

"We're going to make a movie. Now…you don't look convincing enough for an actress in my movie. We need to…oh, rough you up a little bit." Joker says, offhandedly, almost cheerily, before facing Julia and rearing back, laying a hard punch right in her left eye. She cries out with the blow, before biting her lip and looking up at him.

"What the hell was that for?!" She snaps, angrily, as he's looking her face over. He doesn't answer, just backhands her as hard as he can, and then punches her again on the right cheekbone. By the time he's done 'roughing her up a little bit', she's got a black eye and her pretty face is swelling up horribly, blood running down from her split lip and bruises all over. She's sobbing, too, and her makeup is running.

"There we go! _Now_ you're pretty enough to be in my movie. It's for a very selective audience," He says, walking out of sight and returning with a cheap video camera, "And they really like it when the actress is a little beaten. Gets more emotional reaction, you know." He turns on the camera as Julia hangs her head, and begins to narrate in a very alien, very excited voice.

"What's your name?" He asks, and she can hear that he's on the verge of laughter. She raises her head enough for her blond hair to fall aside and the once-pretty face to show in the dim lighting.

"J…Julia…"

"Julia? When did you change it from Michelle?" He sounds like he's about to crack up laughing at how pathetic she looks.

"When…when I got away from you…_again_." She sneers the last word, and the giggles in his voice immediately silence. When he speaks again, it's very calm, and very controlled.

"Do you think anyone's coming to save you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"…Because…" Julia starts, slowly, "Nobody…cares…about…me…" She trails off, ending in a near whisper. Joker laughs again.

"Why do you say _that_?"

"Because they all think I'm…like you. Sick. Out of my…mind. _Cray-zee_ as a fucking shithouse rat!" She shouts the last sentence, and he snarls, grabbing her by the face and slamming her head into the back of her wooden chair. She goes limp, and he steps back, regaining a soft bit of laughter in his voice.

"Julia…are you _afraid_?"

"…No."

"Well, you _should_ be." He growls the word, and she stares in terror at him. "Because we're going to play a game with Gotham PD. And you know how they are with hostages." He turns the camera around, walking up to Julia as he talks.

"Ms. King here…oh _sorry_, **Julia** here is going to be at a specific place at a specific time, waiting for someone to come save her. I want Officer Michael Keegan to come, alone, and see Michelle again. She was all broken up when you broke her heart, you know. Pitiful sight." He laughs at 'pitiful', and then directs the camera at Julia again.

"Isn't that right, Michelle?"

"…Go fuck yourself." She mutters, loud enough to be heard, and is backhanded again, and she knows that he's letting the camera catch this.

"Watch your mouth; we're on camera, after all. Don't want to say anything the _kids_ at home wouldn't be allowed to hear." He laughs as he speaks again, looking into the camera and talking. "Keegan shows up at 1617 Straighten Road, warehouse number thirteen, at noon tomorrow, _alone_, or Michelle ends up on Gotham PD's front doorstep, in _pieces_. Goodbye, Gotham!" He shrieks in laughter at those last two words, before shutting the camera off and setting it aside.

"Good actress. You're lucky I changed my mind at the last minute; I went into this thinking that it was going to be a _snuff_ film." Joker is smiling now, slicing the rope and unlocking the handcuffs, and Julia doesn't move.

"Michelle? We awake in there? I didn't kill you, did I?" He snaps his fingers in front of her face, and she stands up shakily and begins to stomp away from him. It's not five steps later that she collapses, and he's grabbing her by her upper arm and dragging her along.

"Didn't think you'd be able to walk after that one." He notes, and she jerks out of his grip and tries to walk away from him. He catches her by the arm again. "Don't be so difficult; it's just the job. I'd do your makeup too, but I only know how to do _one_ face, and it's not the one we need to make you look like a battered victim."

"You're a monster." Julia murmurs, and his grip tightens.

"And you're a whore. You see, we both have _unsavory_ titles attached to our names, don't we? You don't call me the ones I don't like, and I don't remind you that you're a pickpocket gutter whore. Sound fair?" He ends on a high, pleasant note, and after a moment, she nods slightly. "Good, good. Let's make this as enjoyable as possible." He guides her to a spare room, and walks her in to the mattress thrown on the corner of the room.

"After all, I might be the last person you ever _really_ talk to _ever_ again." Joker adds, cheerily, while walking out the door of her room and slamming it behind him. After a moment of silence, Julia buries her face in her hands and she cries.


	26. Battles

"Don't look so unhappy. You get to see lover boy Michael again; you should smile." He tells her this while she's got her hands cuffed behind her back and she's being shoved into the back of a cold warehouse. Number thirteen. When he shoves her she staggers a few paces before her knees buckle and she falls to her knees on the cold cement, hanging her head. The tape went out just under an hour ago, and so they'll be coming very soon. Well, hopefully, just Keegan is going to show up. If not, Julia is sure that she's going to be sliced to ribbons and mailed to Gordon's doorstep.

"Have _fun_." Joker chimes, before the warehouse door slams shut and Julia is sunk into pure, mindless darkness. Her heart speeds up to the pace of a drum but she can't seem to get to her feet, because her hands being behind her throw off her balance. She tries to stagger to her feet and only succeeds in falling on her face, and feels the cold concrete against her cheek. It's wet. She's going to go even madder than before in this vast black room.

What does she do?

What will she do?

Oh god, what _can_ she do?

She hears the door open and sits up, with difficulty, looking at the lone figure in the doorway. It's Michael. He has a gun leveled at her, holding a flashlight in the other hand and keeping it above his gun, looking around.

"Michelle?" He asks, and she's disgusted by how he's acting. Caring. Kind. Misleading. "Oh Michelle, I'm so glad you're alright-" He makes his way over to her and kneels in front of her, but she turns her head away from him. Angry.

"Ugh, Michelle…it's really not how you heard it. The newspapers, they exaggerate things…misquoted me…I never told them about half of the things you said. I mean, I even arrested some of the mafia guys that gave you back to that clown freak. Come on, Michelle!" He turns her head back to face him, smiling kindly, and she almost falls for it. She wants to, so damn badly. "Believe me?" He asks, softly, and for a moment, she begins to mouth 'yes'. Then, she thinks, and she stops, and stares at him.

"I never said that…I was caught by the mafia…Michael." Her tone becomes dull, and his soft expression turns stony. He's been foiled. "You're in with the mafia, aren't you? You're a dirty cop."

"Smart girl," Michael sneers, grabbing her by the hair and putting his gun in her face. She's staring down the barrel. "Yeah, I'm dirty. Who isn't, nowadays? But now, I can't let you go. You'll probably tattle on me if I do, won't you? I can't _afford_ that."

"No, I won't, I swear-"Julia begins, and he throws her to the floor.

"The others are waiting for me to radio them to come in, so we're not going to be bothered. You know," He paces around her, slowly, keeping his gun trained on her, "When I saw you on the tape, I wanted to see if I could get you for myself. You're a beautiful woman. Not before, Michelle, but now you are. I wanted you."

"We don't need to do this-" She starts, before he kicks her in the ribs and she goes silent with a pained whimper.

"Yes, Michelle, oh yes we do. No loose ends. But they'll never wonder about me, of course; Michael Keegan, the brightest up-and-coming young officer, failed to save the hostage Michelle King. They'll never wonder if they find you with a bullet in your pretty face; Joker kills all his hostages sooner or later. I'll say that I walked in here and found you dead. I leave in a car; you leave in a body bag. It's easy." She sits up as he kneels down and aims the gun at her face again. He likes having this much control. It sickens her, almost as much as the terror makes her sick.

"Why did you do it?" She asks, quietly, and he blinks.

"What?"

"Why did you betray me? I trusted you…" She won't say love. She'll never admit that she loved him. He smirks, slightly, and for a moment, lets the gun lower from her face.

"You trusted me? I wanted you to. I knew that I could use you. You're Michelle King, the woman with the worst luck in Gotham. You told me all about yourself; your shitty childhood, the run in with that psychotic stalker that locked you up and fucked you every night saying 'I love you' for what, three years? Your adoptive parents dying, you being left with and then abandoned by your uncaring stepbrother, having to skim dates for dinners just to feed yourself, being stuck with that prick Jonny or Jim or whatever the fuck his name was, I wasn't really listening, being snatched as a hostage by that crazy bastard Joker…you told it all to me. And so when Joker snatched you again, because he never leaves any loose ends either, I unloaded it all to the press. They all called me a hero for dealing with a space case like you. Compassionate.

"I led you on so that I could get recognition. And once I had it, I became popular. Interviews. Newspaper articles. Everyone wanted to know more about you, sick bitch that you are, through me. But I had to…exaggerate a little bit. You're boring. I took your words and made them spicier, more interesting; you went from a victim to a sympathizer. Poor girl to crazy bitch. Gotham likes a hero, but damn, do they love a villain." He brushes her blond hair out of her bruised face, and she looks so innocent and sad and fragile that he, for a split second, reconsiders. He's not heartless.

Her hands rise up and she slams her fist against his chin, knocking him back. He fires his gun, and the bullet flying up past Julia and she snatches the gun out of his numb hands. She hears him swear at her and she runs in the opposite direction of him, ducking behind some steel drums right as muffled fire rings out and bullets ping off of the wall in front of her. He's got a silencer on a second gun. Fuck.

"Michelle, we don't have to play this game. It can either be quick," She hears him walking towards her slowly, "Or it can be slow. Believe me, you don't want it slow and I don't have time to do it that way. So come out and let's finish it quick." Julia ducks as he fires at the blond crown of her head, and crawls along the cold floor, hampered by the handcuffs still on her wrists. The concrete is scraping against the palms of her hands and it's not long before Michael is following little specks and spots of blood along the flooring with his flashlight, and he fires again at a flash of blond far ahead of him. She whirls around a corner, back against a large crate, panting. She has a gun. He has a gun. She's a horrible shot. He's had professional training.

She's fucked.

He's going to win.

"Hey doll," He says in her ear, a half second before turning the corner and shooting at her. The bullet grazes her shoulder and she cries out, running away and towards the door. Pain explodes in her leg and she falls screaming, clutching it against her as blood stains her hands and clothes.

"Don't make it hard." He says, walking towards her easily as she crawls away from him pitifully, once again forgetting the pistol in her hand scraping against the concrete flooring. "We've got no time left. It was fun; you can't say that it wasn't." Her back hits a steel drum and she raises the pistol at him, terrified. He laughs.

"You won't do it. You can't. You've told me so." He smiles, knowing that she can't possibly bring herself to do it. She aims for a moment, shakily, before lowering the gun in defeat and hanging her head. "Good girl. Now, say goodni-" He starts, before she whips around the barrel and shoves it. It topples to the ground and rolls towards him, and he trips over it and hits the concrete.

"Bitch!" He spits, as she staggers away, leaving a trail of blood behind her. He feels like something's missing, like he's lighter somehow, but he ignores it and gives chase. "I'll blow your goddamn head off! Get back here!" He fires at her, but his flashlight has rolled away and he can only track her by sound. Her breathing is loud enough that she can't ever truly disappear. He stands and follows the wall, after her.

"I don't want this! Please, Michael!" Julia cries from somewhere far-off, and he laughs sharply.

"You think we can stop? I'm not stopping 'til you're dead, Michelle. I _have_ to do this. I…I can't afford _not_ to."

"Why? Why can't we just talk this out?"

"Because…" He says through his teeth, as he sees her taking shelter behind a large crate, a moving shadow amongst other shadows. "Never compromise. Never leave any loose ends. I can't stop, because…I have to…help her…_save_ her." He breathes the last part, turning the corner, and through a small window high above them, he can see her, dimly. She's holding his radio, and her thumb has been on the button the entire time. Her bruised and battered face holds an expression of sadness and victory, and anger. She's leveling her gun at him, and it's aiming at his heart.

"It's over, Michael. They know now." Her voice quakes, as she watches him stare at the radio, in shock.

"You…you bitch!" He snarls, advancing on her. "Do you know what you've done??"

"No. And I don't care." Julia says, simply, and Michael sees that she's crying. She fires her gun and he stares down at his chest, where the fabric is quickly being soaked with blood. She's shot him. The woman that said, very clearly, that she never wanted to take a life again, that she would rather die than kill again, has just shot him. He lets out a wheeze, falling to his knees, blood dripping onto the concrete. She lets the gun barrel fall slightly, and it's all the space he needs. He jerks his own gun up at her and puts his finger on the trigger, glaring. If he's going to die, she's going to die too. Julia can't react fast enough, and just stares.

"Goodnight, Julia."

He's about to fire when something collides with his hand, and he drops the gun while clutching his hand to his chest, a moment later, he drops to the concrete motionless. It's something small and thrown. Michelle recognizes that it's a small bat-shaped boomerang like object, and looks up to the rafters, wide-eyed. She sees him, a shadow against shadows, for a split second before he fades back into the darkness, disappearing, and the warehouse doors fly open. Cops rush in, shouting. Julia can't understand what they're saying; her vision is becoming fuzzy around the edges. She can't really feel the pain in her leg anymore, dropping to her knees, as she hears Michael breathe out the word 'Samantha'. Julia collapses beside him, right as people are around them, shaking her, lifting her and moving her out into sweet, bright sunlight.

She aches all over, and can't understand, comprehend, what the various cop's and paramedic's words mean. Soon enough, she closes her eyes and lets herself fade into unconsciousness, let come what may.


	27. Metamorphoses

When she opens her eyes, painfully bright white meets them. This scene, this room, is far too familiar. And so is the scent of antiseptic.

Julia wakes up to observe the hospital room around her, and it's not long before they brief her on things. The nurses, doctors, policemen that visit; they tell her all about it.

Michael is dead. She knew that from when she heard him breathe his last, a soft sigh of a name. She asks who Samantha is. They won't tell her. They say that it wouldn't be good for her health. For her mental health, they mean. They tell her that she lost a lot of blood and lost consciousness, and they tell her that she might have a slight limp from the bullet's damage, and they tell her that she'll probably need a cane sometimes. Apparently, the bullet hit bone and cracked it. Badly. She's drugged out on morphine a lot of the time.

She almost died. One of the doctors tells her that someone upstairs must really like her. She smiles wryly and tells him that the only luck she's ever had came from way down below. He doesn't know how to respond to that. And so he doesn't. He leaves her alone.

Commissioner Gordon comes to talk to her. He tells her that he's sorry that she's gone through so much. She tells him that he didn't have control over it, because if he did, she'd have smacked him by now. He interviews her, though not too in-depth, and asks basic questions. She answers only a few, and dodges the rest. Before he can leave, she asks him to tell Batman 'thank you' if he ever sees him again. Gordon looks at her a bit oddly, but says that he'll try. He leaves, and she wonders if the Joker is finally through with her. She then looks down at her hands and begins to rub them raw with her bed sheets, trying to get off bloodstains that only she can still see. By the time the nurses catch her, she's already bleeding.

* * *

It's two months before she's allowed out of the hospital. A month to convalesce, another for rehabilitation. She has no insurance, and Nathan won't recognize her anymore, so an incredible sum of debt is now on her head; it's a huge weight on her shoulders, as she walks out of the hospital with a cane in her hand and a bottle of valium in her pocket. Reporters mob her for the second time in her life, shoving microphones in her face, screeching questions. Someone's let it slip that the battered woman on the newest Joker tape is alive and well. The bruises and black eye have faded, and her split lip has healed. She's a beautiful, tired, limping woman, swinging her cane now and then to cut a path through reporters.

The first thing she does when she gets out is look up 'Keegan'. She finds a Samantha Keegan. She lives in a small, ratty apartment in a dangerous neighborhood. Gunshots fire off in the distance as Julia walks up to the door, cane-less, since she doesn't rely on it to move around and only needs it on very bad days.

Samantha Keegan is Michael's sister, and bedridden. She's got some sort of disease that keeps her bedridden, a nerve disease that makes it much too painful for her to walk around but for a minute or two. She's also blind.

"Oh, hello, miss Julia." Samantha says, smiling, as Julia comes in. She was let in by the neighbor that helps take care of Samantha now that Michael is gone.

"Hello, miss Keegan." Julia smiles, walking in and standing near the door. Samantha laughs gently, her cloudy eyes staring ahead blankly.

"Call me Samantha. Miss Keegan is too fancy for someone like me."

"Alright, Samantha. Call me Julia." She answers, before leaning against the wall of the dirty apartment building.

"Julia…I always thought that was a very pretty name. Much prettier than Samantha, at least."

"Not at all, Samantha. Julia doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as Samantha." Julia laughs, and Samantha laughs with her. They spend an hour or two as Samantha talks about her brother, Michael, and about all the things they did together as kids. Julia never told Samantha what she came here for, and she was never told that Julia is Michelle King, the woman that shot her brother, but Julia is pretty sure that Samantha somehow just knows.

"He was saving up for an operation for me. Cataracts, you know. He wanted to fix them." Samantha explains, cheerily, smiling very gently. "I told him that it was fine, that I didn't need it, but he wouldn't listen. He wouldn't hear it. He wanted me to see again." She sits up in her bed, staring at-but not seeing-the bland-colored quilt draped across her. "I didn't lose my sight until college. They said that it's usually a disease just for older people, but it happens in younger people, too; Michael said that he was going to get me that operation to see again."

Julia smiles, very sadly, and says nothing, sitting in the chair she's pulled up beside Samantha's bed. Samantha reaches out and takes her hand, holding it tightly.

"He was doing bad things, wasn't he? He was doing wrong to try and get more money." The bedridden woman asks her, point-blank, and Julia blinks. How did she?

"N-no, of course…not…" Her voice cracks and she trails off at the end. Samantha smiles sadly, knowingly.

"You don't have to lie. I was always suspicious, ever since what money he got normally tripled. I asked him if he was, and he lied to me too. He said, 'Don't worry about it, Sammy.' He always said that when I was worried about him. I told him not to do anything dangerous, because he was all I needed. He laughed and said that I was being silly. And I believed him."

She turns her head, to stare at nothing across the room.

"And then one day, I guess it…caught up with him. It's Gotham City; you can't ever get away from what you've done, no matter how hard you try. It's always going to catch up with you. And whatever Michael did, caught up with him."

Julia can't talk. She's guilty. She's so damn guilty. She blames Michael, and at the same time, she wonders if she should've just let him kill her off instead of trying so hard to live. And what did she survive for? What did she throw away another person's life just to keep?

Two black eyes and a bright red slash of a smile are what she sees.

"So…whatever Michael did…don't blame him for it, please. Blame me." Samantha says, softly, and she smiles again, though she turns her head away from Julia so that her guest can't see her crying. "I told him not to do anything that could get him killed. He didn't listen."

"Don't worry…he's forgiven." Is all Julia can muster, her smile very slight, and forced.

Soon after, Samantha and Julia say their goodbyes. And Julia just…walks. She doesn't even know where she's going. She just walks. She walks down every sidewalk she sees, turning whatever corner is ahead, crossing what streets she comes across, never stops. She eventually finds herself at the top of a tall building, staring down. The sun is setting far in front of her, a burning light that remains one of the few that Julia can even see anymore. She stands on the edge of the building, staring down, down, down, four or five stories to the street and cars below. The people walking by on the sidewalk. She wonders what would happen if she takes a single step forward and plummets to her death. Would it be news? Would anyone care? Another poor sap can't take it all anymore and decides to step off a building. Cleanup. Curtains.

Another life slips by in Gotham. And nobody cares.

She stands there for hours. Just watching. And by the time the sun is setting, someone walks up behind her.

"So, are you going to jump? The anticipation's been killing me."

She looks back and sees the terror of Gotham City stroll up to stand at the ledge, slightly behind her and to her left. He has his hands behind his back, and isn't looking at her, but out at the skyline. Julia looks out at the setting sun as well, the cool wind whipping her hair out of her face and blowing it to the right, a long golden curtain twisting in the breeze.

"It depends. Swan dive or running leap?"

"How about a cannonball?"

They are silent for minutes that feel like days, before she glances up at the barely-visible stars high above her. "Has Gotham always been like this?"

"It depends. Are we talking about how they see it, or how I see it?" Joker asks, easily, and Julia doesn't have to see him to know that he means the people, small as ants, walking along the sidewalk below them.

"Surprise me." She answers, and there is neither sadness nor joy in her tone. She is empty. He climbs onto the ledge beside her, staring down. He looks as if he's done it many times before.

"Gotham's been like this since the first little man decided to build a city here. It's just hidden behind their-" He taps his boot on the ledge twice, "-protective veils. They don't see it like we do, because they'd go gibbering mad if they did. We see this city…this animal named Gotham for what it is."

"And what is that?" She glances sideways at him, and sees that he's staring down at the street below, scars painting a smile where there is none, and he's thinking about taking that one extra step.

"A sane asylum."

The two of them stand there for what feels like an eternity, before the sun sets and they are sunk in darkness. Lights, pinpricks like diamonds, light up the pitch-toned Gotham night.

"I killed a man." She says, suddenly, and he nods his head slightly.

"I know. Did you like it?"

"…I don't know. I hate the aftermath, though."

"Ah, everybody does."

She stares down at the ground again, and lifts her foot to take that last step. She sets it back down a moment later.

"Can't win for losing in this damn city."

Joker glances sideways at her, and he's trying to read her blank expression. "No…nobody wins. We just lose in different ways."

A moment later, Julia steps off the ledge, and back onto the building. Joker does as well, standing beside the ledge instead as he watches her take a few steps forward and stop.

"I had a dream. It was the one that made me decide to run away again, that last time." She keeps her back to him, staring off into the distance. He leans against the raised ledge, watching.

"Oh? Care to share?" He asks, casually, and she puts her hands behind her back, clasping them together.

"It was snowing, and I was standing on a ledge. And I decided to walk off."

"Sounds like a pretty good dream to me."

"One of the best I've had in years."

She turns around, and walks up to him, slowly. Her bright blue eyes, though their color is fake, meet his black pair, and he watches her quietly.

"Is it always this hard?" She asks, softly, and he stares off at the moon, distantly.

"It's never the same for two people. Sometimes, we have to be driven to it, slowly. Sometimes, we just snap. Other times, we just wake up one day and decide we can't take it anymore. Madness is a funny sort of thing; it's kind of like Heaven, you could say. It's easy once you're there, but it's hell to actually get there."

Julia walks forward, slowly, almost drunkenly, and leans against his chest, loosely wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. Joker lets her do this, because he knows that it's a hard transition from the people walking the streets below them to what he is. It's losing all your faith, and throwing aside everything you ever believed in. It's giving up on ever living a normal, quiet life, the white picket fence and the American Dream, if anything as stupid and fabled as that even exists. It's losing yourself and putting the pieces back together in a new order.

It's a rebirth in fire.

The Joker sits on the ledge and lets Julia lay against him, loosely circling his arms around her waist. He can't tell if she's laughing or crying into his chest, and he'll never know. She'll never tell him that she's not doing it for herself, she's doing it for him for having to do this all alone.

Saccharine and Strychnine, high in the Gotham night.

* * *

**((So...what did you guys think? I really like this chapter, and I think it's one of my better ones, but that's just me. What did you guys think of it? Good? Bad? You-suck-and-need-to-jump-in-a-volcano? I'm eager to hear.^^))**


	28. Paints

In a bright, sunny park, on a bright, sunny day, a child of five is shoved to the ground by a child of ten. The older child laughs, before marching off to destroy the sandcastle the younger boy had spent so much effort building, and the younger boy begins to cry. His whimpers are almost loud enough to be cries before he hears soft whistling to get his attention, and he turns big, pretty blue eyes framed by long dark lashes to a park bench not far away. His mother isn't watching him right now, talking with a friend, but he doesn't even give her a thought as he sees the pretty blonde woman sitting on a dull greenish park bench, big blue eyes like his and bright red lips, smiling and gesturing him over.

He's just a child. He doesn't even give a thought to walking towards her, slowly, because she's pretty. She looks nice. He comes to stand a little ways away from her, out of arm's reach at least, before eying her curiously.

"Hello there, little boy." The woman says, and her voice is warm and kind. There's a cane leaning against the bench and the boy stares at the long scar running down over her left eye, splitting her eyebrow. "I saw what happened. That wasn't nice at all." She frowns, and the boy nods slightly.

"I'm not 'posed to talk to strangers." He says, point-blank, and she blinks slightly at him, batting her blue eyes.

"Your parents are smart," She smiles again, "Very smart. My name is Julia. What's yours?"

"…Charlie…"

"Julia, meet Charlie. Charlie, meet Julia. We're not strangers anymore, right? So we can be friends now, can't we?" She cocks her head, like a curious puppy, and after a moment, he nods. The logic checks out with his childish mind; he can see no wrong in it. Besides…she looks so nice…she can't be dangerous. Dangerous people have guns and knives, scars and snarls. Bad people are ugly. Good people are pretty. Julia is pretty. So she must be good.

"That was a shame. About your sandcastle, I mean." Julia states, looking off at the ten-year-old stamping over the little sand building. It wasn't very good, but little Charlie poured his heart and soul into making it, and seeing the older boy stamp on it makes him sad and angry.

"I hate him." The little boy grumbles, ignoring his mother's words about not using the word 'hate'. When he remembers, he shoots wide blue eyes at Julia, speaking quickly. "Don't tell mama I said that! She'll get mad at me! I'm not 'posed to say mean things like that!"

Julia blinks, before nodding slightly. "I won't tell."

"Promise!" The little boy half-shouts.

"I swear. Cross my heart, hope to die." Julia crosses her heart with a smile, and it's so kind and warm and reassuring that Charlie calms down again, slowly. She begins speaking again, while Charlie, without really realizing it, sits down besides Julia. He likes her, so isn't scared of her. "Charlie…it's not bad to feel angry, or say you hate someone." The little boy turns his blue eyes to her again, and they're so bright blue that they're startling.

"But…mama said that we hafta say nice things…"

"We do, we do. But saying mean things feels good, doesn't it? Makes you feel better?" Julia queries, and after a moment, Charlie nods again. "And you know what? Revenge isn't bad either. It's no good to keep angry feelings inside you. It'll make you sick."

"Sick? Like a cold?"

"Like a very bad cold. Like a flu that hurts, right here." She points to her heart, and Charlie puts a tiny hand over his own. "Do you want to know how to fix that?"

"…How?" He asks, earnestly, and she reaches into the pocket of her coat and pulls out a little round metal object with a red button on top, holding it out to him.

"When he makes you mad, push this button. But wait until you're so mad at him that you can't possibly stand it, okay?" Julia instructs, and the boy takes the object, nodding. He smiles at her and turns to go, before she stops him. "Here, it's a present." She tells him, handing him a bouncy rubber ball, bright red. He smiles wider, eyes glimmering, before saying 'thank you' to Julia and running off to play with his new toy. Julia sits at the bench, cane at her side, and watches with her gentle smile.

Charlie has ten blissful minutes of playing with his rubber ball before the older bully notices that he's got a new toy and comes over.

"Where'd you get that?" He demands, and Charlie clasps the ball against his chest, glaring.

"It was a present."

"From who?"

Charlie closes his mouth tight and shakes his head, because he's not going to let the bully get to Julia. He wants to protect her. The older boy marches up and grabs the ball away from him, laughing, before running back to his friends without giving Charlie a second thought. The younger boy is so angry that he's crying. Julia gives him a present and that boy has to take it away. He's so mad…he can't stand it…

"I'll show him!" He snaps, digging the metal object with the red button from his tiny jean pocket, and staring at the bully, hard. He's in the center of the park, sitting among picnic cloths spread out across the grass, showing his thieved toy off to his friends. His parents aren't far away, ignoring him, and Charlie's own parents are talking with them.

"I'll show him." Charlie mutters one last time, before pushing the switch to an 'on' position on the side, like Julia showed him, and pushing the red button down as hard as he can.

There are a series of loud explosions that follow moments after. The little red ball explodes, and a moment later, more explosions happen from their hidden places, and the park is covered with smoke and dust and screams. The little Charlie is bowled over and knocked to the grass, little hands over his ears, and he's terrified. He closes his eyes tight until the explosions stop.

When they do, he opens his eyes to a minefield.

There's blood and corpses and craters and languished cries that float over the breeze like dandelion puffs. He sees the bodies, but he doesn't recognize what they signify. He can't comprehend it. He just can't. What he does know, however, is that he doesn't know where his parents are. He runs towards where they were, shaking and tripping once or twice, until he finds them. They're not whole; the two were standing over a hidden charge, and blown to shreds. Charlie doesn't know that. He just knows that they're not moving and they're bloody. He whirls around and finds that the boy that stole his toy and broke his sandcastle is missing his hand and his face, the head a gory crater of blood and gray matter and bleach white bone.

Julia. What about Julia?

"Julia?" He asks, hollowly, before turning around to look at the seat. People are rushing towards him, paramedics that have been called very recently, two off-duty cops that are pulling survivors out of the small, decimated park. Someone begins to pull him away as he continues to hunt for the bench she was on.

"Julia?!" Little Charlie shrieks, as people pull him away, but when he finds the bench, there's no trace of the smiling woman. Julia is gone.

* * *

Julia walks down the sidewalk easily, her cane tapping against the concrete ahead of her as she walks. People are rushing all around her, but she remains calm and composed. Her cell phone rings and she leans her cane against the wall, answering it nonchalantly.

"Hello?"

"Julie…Schwarzy…you've been _busy_." She hears the voice on the other end that sounds like a croon, and she smiles.

"Just doing your bidding, oh chaotic one."

"You're making me blush." He sounds amused, and that's good for Julia-slash-Schwarzwald. When Joker is in a good mood, everyone is in a good mood. His tone abruptly changes, however, with the next line. He loses all amusement in his tone and becomes serious. "We're moving tonight. Get back here."

Julia blinks, before smiling slightly. "Alright, boss. Be back soon as possible."

"Make it quick." He answers, snappily, hastily, before the line goes dead. Julia ends the call on her side and shuts the phone, sighing under her breath. He has to be schizophrenic or something, with how his mood switches on a dime. Or maybe that was bipolar? Oh well, either one.

She hitches a ride with a passerby, telling them to head downtown. They make it halfway before the car slows to a stop beside a dumpster and the driver's body is dumped out of the driver's seat, a bullet wound to her head, and Julia drives the rest of the way back to their hideout, the chemical factory they've jumped back to. She walks in nonchalantly, the cane now thrown over her shoulder as she walks without the overdone limp that she uses to throw off suspicion in the city. Because what crippled, cane-using woman would be even remotely dangerous?

This one is.

She walks into the building and back to her room, dropping the cane and tossing her earthy-brown jacket aside. She pulls off the black slacks, and throws the black turtleneck sweater on the mattress, digging into her suitcase sitting beside the same mattress, pulling out a mishmash of black and white. It's her Schwarzwald costume, of course. The boots and gloves are sitting aside. Julia takes a moment to admire her fingernails, painted in alternating black and white, while pulling on the bottom and then the top of her costume that could be seen as a uniform of sorts, before pulling on the gloves and then the heels.

"Oh…damn…" She mumbles when she finds out that she's out of greasepaint; all three tubes are curled like bland white plastic worms. She can't go out without her face paint, can she?

That means she'll have to borrow some. And there's one person that has the colors she needs. She thinks over this new turn of events as she grabs her spray paint cans and sprays her hair; half black, half white. The scant spray paint marks on her scalp and forehead can be covered up with the makeup. Julia then spends a moment, while she brushes her now sticky and stringy hair out so that it's nice and straight and lovely again, pondering what the health risks were of using spray paint on her hair and inhaling the fumes while she did.

Oh well. It's not about thinking things through, not anymore. Joker's taught her that.

She clicks through the hallways, breezily; tracing her way up to Joker's room, passing masked thugs preparing for the newest job, whatever it is this time. They barely even stare at her anymore, a blotch of whites and blacks that clash heavily against the concrete gray, because she's a resident now. She's been here for the three weeks since Joker brought her back and she began working for them without any of that useless, weepy bullshit. It's general consensus for those who care that Joker probably finally drove her off the deep end.

"Hey! Boss!" Julia, a few strokes of paint away from becoming Schwarzwald, calls at his door, rapping on it with her knuckles. There isn't an answer, though she's sure he's here; he's always in his room before a big job, getting ready. She raps on his door again, louder this time, and whines his name like a child would. Schwarzwald is much different from Julia, or Michelle, or whoever she wants to be. She could even be who Michelle Queen was supposed to be from the get-go; carefree, happy, and somewhat childish. Except with added sociopathic tendencies.

"Jo-ker!"

After a moment, she runs off of whatever stupid whim hits her at that moment and opens the door anyway, walking into the messy room. "I need to borrow your makeup!" She announces, before seeing the door to the bathroom, cracked. Without any thought of the repercussions at all, she walks in with a demand on her lips. It dies off, however, into a shocked sort of silence. She's interrupting something she shouldn't have.

Julia, Schwarzwald, either one, has walked in on the Joker before he's put on his war paint. He hasn't even spray-painted his hair green either (she was surprised to learn that when he said 'dye', he meant 'paint'). She hasn't ever seen him without either one, except maybe at his trial, and she was too terrified of him to even fully take in his appearance then.

She's very surprised to see that he's gorgeous. Breezy blond hair, an almost boyish face; he's very handsome, and for that one frozen moment, she forgets who he is. She thinks he looks angelic, since he's not snarling or smiling in that mad manner that makes him look monstrous, and he's just staring at her with the same surprised expression that she's wearing. She doesn't even see the scars, in her trance state of pure shock.

The only thing that snaps her out of it is when she looks into his eyes. They're the exact same as they always are; black pits, piercing; a pair of chasms teeming with untold horrors. They're terrifying when they're focused so intently onto her faux baby blues.

And when she comes back to herself, Julia begins to feel the terror of her situation. It's almost as if she's interrupted a holy ritual, viewing an event that no living man should see; trespassing into territory that she should never have entered. She turns to walk out and feels fingers knot in her long, still slightly wet hair, dragging her back with a yelp of pain.

"Didn't you ever learn to **_knock_**?" He growls, as she collides into him again and stares into the mirror, seeing his handsome face twisted with black rage. She's on ice as thin as paper.

"I…did…you didn't answer-" She begins, hurried, before feeling a harsh tug on her hair and gritting her teeth.

"I know. I didn't _want_ to, because **I** **am** **busy**." Joker enunciates those last three words very slowly, very clearly, and she nods hastily, eyes wide. "What did you want?"

"Need to borrow…paint?" She says it as a question, as if that's going to pacify his anger at her intrusion. He growls under his breath, before tossing her against the counter, hard. She catches herself on it and ignores the searing pain of the sharp counter's edge pressing hard into her stomach, and sees that his paint tubes are already laid out.

"I'm sorry. I…that was stupid…" She murmurs, as he snatches the can of green spray paint and shakes it as if he were to throttle the nonexistent life out of it. The clicking of the can as he shakes it is rapid.

"Do it and get out." Joker spits, and Julia very quickly begins to smear her makeup on, keeping her eyes on her face in the mirror's reflection. She does steal occasional glances at him beside her, however, as he sprays his hair into stringy, dirty green. She finishes with the white, moving around her star tattoo, the one poised above her left eye and moving down along the long scar that Joker gave her that night before he was locked away. She had to get it again, and it was incredibly unpleasant. It at least covers her scarring from getting the damn thing removed. She does her red lips, erases it because she smeared, and does it again, slowly. She's staring at Joker as he does his own. The black around one of his eyes is streaking upwards too much and it bothers Schwarzwald.

"Hey…" She murmurs, not believing she's about to do this. He grunts slightly to show he heard her, and she turns to face him. "Look at me. Sir." Schwarzwald amends quickly, and he turns his head to glare at her.

"What?" Joker snaps, before Schwarzwald reaches up and smears her thumb over his white-toned forehead, before smearing it over the black smudge. She has to fix it or it's going to drive her insane. He's staring very pointedly at her, waiting. When she stops and pulls back, he examines her work in the mirror. "What was that?"

"Erm…sorry, boss. Just…bothered me." She answers, sheepishly, looking over her own makeup in the mirror again. "I'll go then." She turns and walks towards the door, before he grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her back and around to face him. His makeup is done, and so is hers, but he's staring at her very carefully, almost as if he were appraising her. Schwarzwald is uncomfortable, very much so. "Um…is there something…?"

"It's too neat." He tells her, point-blank, and she stares at him, not comprehending. "Your makeup is too neat. Clean. It's not intimidating at all." He repeats, and she blinks.

"But…that's kind of my thing…" Schwarzwald murmurs, before Joker stares at her harder. She shrinks in his grasp, as he's in his paint again and is once again terrifying to behold. She's devoted to him, has been ever since he helped her through her transition into this mad world. He helped Alice into Wonderland, and he helped her decide that the mad world was the one she wanted to live and thrive in. Why shouldn't she devote herself to him and all his silly whims of chaos, death and destruction?

Besides…what point would there be to her if she didn't? A crazed woman that dresses up like a colorblind clown and has found her niche in wreaking havoc isn't really an accepted member of society. They'd lock her up in Arkham faster than she could blink, because she'd be easy to catch without a guiding hand. Anyway, she owes him a great debt for helping her out when she needed help, and for saving her from a perpetually unhappy life of playing arm candy for various rich boys who want some of her rich brother's money and working various dead-end jobs until she drops dead or someone stabs her. She's happy to die for him, because she can at least die happy.

Stockholm? Maybe. But does it make her happy? Definitely.

"Um…what are you…?" Schwarzwald murmurs, staring up at him curiously, about a moment before she feels the edge of the counter dig into the small of her back and she's being bent backwards over it, highly uncomfortably, and he's shoving his tongue down her throat. She's not even expecting it and by the time she can react, to try and at least push him back and ask 'What the **fuck**', he's got her wrists caught in one hand and pinned against her chest. And lord, his eyes are open and he's staring into her wide pair, and she freezes like a deer caught in the headlights. It's only a few seconds before he pulls back and lets her go, examining his makeup in the mirror, and she's wheezing against the counter.

"What was that?!" Schwarzwald snaps, and she thinks that she might taste greasepaint from that habit that he has of licking his lips when he's excited, and he doesn't even look at her as he speaks.

"Fixing you." Joker looks back, and he's cool and impassive, not flustered like Schwarzwald. She's almost angry about it. He can't even pretend? She looks in the mirror now and sees what he means. The clean red lipstick-like application of the paint on her lips is smeared, and it looks kind of like a scar-less version of Joker's smile, because the ends of it are turned up in a smeary, greasy smile. He was right about it making her look more terrifying; she looks less like a Cubist painting and more like an unhinged, something-is-not-quite-right-with-her sort of woman.

"…Oh. Did you really have to-"

"I'd never get it right if I did it with my hands. That sort of look isn't something you can just pull out of thin air. Greasy…messy…flustered?" He adds on that last word with a cruelly amused sort of smile, making fun of her obvious state of disconcertion. They both know that there's absolutely no romantic connotation to what he's just done to her; it's a game under the guise of a task, and he likes seeing a composed woman so very thrown off kilter. She huffs, annoyed, and turns to leave again.

"Oh, don't be so _uptight_." Joker grabs her wrist and drags her back, turning her around and wiping his thumb across his bottom lip, before smearing it onto her cheekbones. Red blush marks, Schwarzwald realizes, as she sees her reflection in the mirror again. "You need to have more fun with life. Try to be too serious and you'll turn into Harvey Dent."

"And?"

"And then you'll fall out of a window and die." He adds, with a black sort of cheer, and she huffs again.

"Oh, you're a laugh riot." She mutters, as he laughs in her ear at her mood.

"I bring Gotham the giggles. Let's go." Joker shoves her towards the door and she obliges, letting him pass her and then following behind him closely down the hallway. Despite his nasty trick, Schwarzwald regains a bit of her good mood and playfully bumps into him, trying to get him to play with her. He responds by putting a hand on her shoulder and shoving her into a wall, continuing to walk. She hits it and crumples, before he whistles at her like a dog and she moves to her feet, staggering after him.

They're kind of like children, in a way. Clown-themed, insane children with heavy arms, but still, children. And everyone knows that there's nothing so innocent and cruel as a child.


	29. Wars

"So…what are we doing?" She asks, dumbly, kicking her feet back and forth as they all sit in their black van together. Nobody's told her. The masked thugs on her and his left and right are silent, as their leader of sorts begins to tell them.

"Schwarzy, you haven't kept up with things lately, but that idea I told you about a while back?" Joker looks at her now, and she nods. "Well, it should be coming all together tonight."

"We're going to drive Gordon insane?"

"Not insane. Insane is when you…drool...and scream…and babble _crazy_ things. We're just going to make him a bit…_mad_." Every space in his speech is illustrated by over the top hand gestures, before folding them in his lap and tapping his foot, excitedly. Schwarzwald nods, the shotgun balanced on her shoulder, the safety being on of course (safety first!), and glances around at nothing in particular.

"So…ah…how are we doing this?" Everyone else knows but her.

"With you, poor, wounded creature that you are." Joker tells her, smiling pleasantly. Schwarzwald cocks her head slightly, confused.

"But I'm not wounded."

"No, you aren't. Let's fix that."

It's not a moment later that he reaches across and grabs her by the front of her costume, pulling a long, thin object and stabbing her in the stomach. It's not very deep, just enough for her to bleed, but it still hurts enough. She whines in pain, jerking her hands over the wound, and looks up at him as he examines the ice pick in his gloved hand for a moment before putting it away again.

"_Now_ you are." Joker smiles again, and it's a chilling attempt at mimicking a friendly sort of smile. Schwarzwald drops her head and stares at her knees, as the van comes to a stop. Joker begins to tell her the plan, in full.

"You walk one block in the opposite direction that we drive off in. One block away is the good Commissioner's home, where his darling wife and children wait. There's going to be a car parked not too far away; you'll know it when you see it. Tell them that you need a ride to the hospital because you've lost a fight with the wrong end of a knife in a mugging. Our Commissioner is at the precinct right now, working overtime to take care of that _random_ bombing in the park earlier today, so he won't be bothering you. Get them into the car, and I don't care how. There's a guy in the back of the car, hiding; he'll drive you where you need to go to meet up with us. Easy enough? I thought so. Out you go!"

He pulls the back doors open and shoves her out, sans shotgun and with cane. She glances back in time to see him wave slightly and slam the doors shut, taillights disappearing down the street. Schwarzwald looks like a psycho freak, bleeding on the concrete, and he expects her to convince anyone at all that she's harmless? She needs an idea of what to do…a plan…

Wait…no she doesn't. Joker's never needed a plan, and she won't either. She's going deal with what happens as it comes. Time to see if she's a good ad-libber.

"Never a better time to learn." Schwarzwald murmurs, beginning to walk in the opposite direction of the van. She gets some odd stares from the occasional pedestrian, but they don't really want to question it as she has a hand over the stinging stomach wound and walks, looking angry or annoyed or something like that. After all the walking, she staggers up to the front doors of a home that has a conspicuous black vehicle parked out front, nobody in the driver's seat. Her cane taps against the concrete and remains the main sound in the night.

When she walks up to the door and knocks, fixing an ailing expression on her face, it's only a few moments before a woman answers the door; probably Gordon's wife. She seems wary, suspicious of Schwarzwald, who says her name is Julia, but after seeing the blood staining the front of her costume, and the cane in her hand, she seems to relent.

"I came from a costume party…I was walking home, and got jumped. Junkie, I think. I don't know how bad this is." Julia speaks in her most ailing, tired voice, glancing at her bloodstained glove. She was never going to get the blood out of that white.

"We can call the paramedics," The wife whose name Schwarzwald isn't privy to suggests, and 'Julia' shakes her head slowly.

"The hospital isn't that far away, and I don't think I can wait. Could you drive me? I'm too…dizzy…to do it myself…" She suggests, slowly, and the woman shakes her head.

"No; I have to stay with my children. I can't leave." She states, steadfast, and Schwarzwald hangs her head, groaning gently and dramatically letting her weight drop, falling against her cane. The woman startles, before leaning down to try and help her. "I'm going to call 9-1-1."

"No! Just…I can call somebody to drive me. Just help me to my car, please?" She raises doe eyes to the woman, bright blue and teary, and she sees the woman's will relenting. Eventually she gives in, and helps Schwarzwald to the car. When she isn't looking, the hidden thug comes up out of his seat and clubs her over the head, and she seems to pass out.

"Keep her here; I'm going for the kids." Schwarzwald orders, dropping the charade and tossing her cane in the back seat with him, turning for the open door and walking in. The kids aren't hard to find; they're noisy, and Schwarzwald catches one of them in the process of beginning to babble to someone about someone breaking in. She grabs the kid and jerks them away from the phone, and picks it up herself. She hears Gordon's frenzied voice on the other end of the line.

"What's happening?! Barbara?? What's wrong??" He demands, and Schwarzwald chuckles into the phone. "Who is this?? Who the hell are you?!" He barks, and she sighs slightly.

"Old friends. Don't worry; _we'll_ contact _you_." She hangs up after that, before dragging the flailing, screaming kids outside and into the car, hopping into the passenger's seat, and having the driver lock all the doors and windows. When they try to club her with her own cane, she jerks around in the seat and fights with them over the cane, taking a few blows to her shoulders and hands in the process.

"You little brats! Give me that!" Schwarzwald snarls, and when the little girl starts screaming, she clamps her hand over her mouth. The girl bites her, hard, and Schwarzwald snaps her hand back, cussing. "I'll beat the hell out of you little shits!"

The poor driver deals with all the fighting and screaming and random cane flailing with the patience of a saint, not saying a word. Eventually, Schwarzwald, inept criminal that she is, gets her cane away from the kids and resists the urge to beat them with it, digging in her bag for her valium bottle. She swallows a pill for the aching in her leg and stares out her window, irritably, for having to babysit the deathly quiet children in the back seat.

By the time they arrive at an abandoned two-story motel that seems to be the meeting place, the kids' mother is awake and has tried to grab the wheel once before, nearly driving them into a ditch. Schwarzwald snarled at her to get back and threatened her with her cane, and she backed off, but only because of the fact that the thug had a gun on him. The helpful thug assists in dragging the three into the dilapidated motel, by dragging Gordon's wife, as Schwarzwald takes the kids.

"Jo-ker! We're _ho-o-me_!" She sings, and sees a thug waving her towards the second floor. They drag the family there and find the Joker on the second floor in a large, open room that appears to have been more than one room in the motel's better days, from the piles of rubble here and there where walls have fallen. There's a thick layer of dust in the air and the lights flicker, barely illuminating the very dark building. When he sees them he smiles, and it's terrifying, as usual. The kids begin to cry; the wife shrinks away, but they're all dragged up to him anyway.

"Schwarzy, looks like you've done it." He chimes, before ordering the thugs to tie up the wife and children together. Schwarzwald kicks at a hunk of stone or plaster, her stomach still stinging horribly. Damn puncture wound.

"Expect anything less?" She asks, dull expectation in her voice, and he laughs slightly.

"You _know_ I did."

"Comforting!"

The two of them walk in different directions, Joker dialing on a cell phone while Schwarzwald sits on a decrepit old table. She's listening to him talk, to who she assumes is the Commissioner.

"Hel-lo, Constable. You don't have to _yell_; I'm right here, you know. _Any_who, we've got a _gorgeous_ woman and two _beautiful_ children right here, and they're just _dying_ to see you. We're at the Oceania Motel, waiting. Oh, and we only want _you_ to come; we don't have enough dip for anyone else." He laughs at that last part, and Schwarzwald rolls her eyes. Just because she's devoted to the man doesn't mean she has to enjoy his jokes. It sounds like Gordon is screaming on the other end of the line."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Commissioner. Looking forward to seeing _you_ too." He laughs and hangs up the phone, as Schwarzwald messes with her cane again. She spins it, tosses it in the air, catches it, swings it around like a sword; she's so _bored_.

"You're impatient." Joker tells her, sitting beside the wife and kids, and Schwarzwald sighs.

"I know. Kind of excited though, you know? I've never committed a _felony_ before."

"You caused that kid to bomb out an entire park."

"That doesn't count. The kid did it, not me." She hears sirens in the distance, and pulls back a moth-eaten curtain to look out a cracked window. Police cars. SWAT vans. She glances back to Joker, dispassionately. "You know that we're totally surrounded, right?"

"Yup." He answers, leaning against the wall and staring at his boots, and she shrugs.

"Oh. Alright then." She turns back to the window, watching a single man walk up towards the front doors. "Just making sure. Hey, look alive; it's show time." She turns away from the window and keeps her cane in her hand, sighing, as the door shoots open.

"Barbara!" Gordon barks, seeing the kids and his wife alive and tied up, and glares at Joker.

"They're fine, they're fine! You act like you don't _trust_ me." The madman laughs, pulling out a knife and pressing the flat side against Gordon's wife's cheek. Gordon stamps forward, menacingly, pulling his gun and aiming, when Schwarzwald points her cane at him and reveals herself from the corner she's been concealing herself in.

"There are more of you?" Gordon asks, disbelieving, and she nods.

"Ayup. Drop the gun." She taps the floor with the cane, and after staring between Schwarzwald and Joker and his family, the Commissioner begrudgingly complies. Joker smiles, knowing the show is really beginning now.

"Now…Commissioner, dear Commissioner…we're going to have _fun_." Joker states, giddily almost. "Tonight, you get to grasp sanity by the thinnest threads, and see if you can hold on." Gordon glares, watching him go on. Schwarzwald is silent. "Now…you pick who's worth saving. Your dear wife…" Joker gestures to the woman, with wild, terrified eyes, "Your strapping son…" He pats the boy on the head, "Or your darling daughter." He brushes the back of his filthy, bloodstained glove along her cheek, and she lets out a whimper of terror.

"No…don't do this!" Gordon barks at him, and as he moves forward again, Joker holds something high enough for everyone in the room to see.

"Whoa whoa whoa, Joker! What the hell?!" Schwarzwald shouts, terrified, as she recognizes that he's holding a detonator. That means there's a bomb somewhere around here. He ignores her, focusing on Gordon.

"Too close, and we all go…_sky high_. You play by **my** rules, Commissioner."

Everyone in the room, besides Joker, is staring in horror at the new danger of the situation they're in. All of their lives are in Gordon's hands right now, and if he so much as sneezes in a way Joker doesn't like, they all die in fire.

"So…who's it going to be, then? Pick. I want you to pick, when they're _looking_ at you." Joker goes on, and there's a satisfaction, or is that anger, in his voice so complete, so total, that it's terrifying. Gordon is at a loss; he stares at his family, stricken with total grief at this horrible choice he's being forced to make, and Schwarzwald feels sick for some reason. Maybe it's the last fluttering threads of her humanity? Or maybe it's the ice pick wound in her stomach getting to her. Either way, she waits in breathless silence for Gordon's decision. Joker's got a knife ready to dispose of the two not chosen, and they all know this.

"Tick tock, Commissioner. Take _too_ long and I'll just kill us **all**." The madman warns, nonchalantly, and Schwarzwald feels dizzy. Does she want to die? No, no. She wants to live. She wants to live this new life of mad glee and love of destruction. She didn't go through all the pain and tears and torment just to die at the whims of a madman. But she serves this madman, and she does absolutely nothing to stop him, even as Gordon shouts at her and the few thugs in the room.

"Are you going to die here?! Do you **_want_** to?!"

Schwarzwald doesn't make eye contact. How do you answer such a question? 'No, not really, but I will if Joker wants me to, because he helped drive me crazy and I like it'?

Another interminable silence passes, and Joker clicks the detonator into an armed position.

"I guess they are, huh? Goodnight!" He chimes, before there's a distinct metallic noise and he jerks his hand back, hissing in pain. The detonator skids across the floor, and a black shape descends upon them like the fist of God. Joker lets out a pleasantly surprised, or is that even gleeful, laugh as he sees him, and Schwarzwald freezes. Batman tackles Joker and Gordon lunges for the detonator, disarming it and tucking it away. Schwarzwald leaps into action, swinging her cane down in an arc at Gordon's back. He takes the blow in stride and kicks her in the bloody stomach, and she staggers back, coughing. The entire room is a maelstrom of movement, clashing, fighting; everyone is moving at once and the entire room is submerged in chaos.

And the one sound that raises above all the others is the laughter. The shrieking, high-pitched laughter of a euphoric madman that chills sane men to the bone. Schwarzwald falters when she hears it. Batman doesn't even flinch, and he and Joker continue to take shots at one another, a brutal battle for dominance over the entire situation.

Schwarzwald flips a switch on her cane and the hidden bladed edge comes out, the cane turning into a veritable machete as she swings at Batman's back while the Joker keeps him occupied. Gordon is already gone, and they know that they don't have much time left. She thinks that her blade scores a hit because she hears a small grunt of pain before he's turning on her, and he's bearing down on her as a cold black rage, and Schwarzwald suddenly feels so small and helpless. Because this isn't a man, not anymore. This is the night, this is the pure blackness that makes her yowl like a cat when she's lost in it.

This is what she fears most.

She's hit. She doesn't know what he hit her with or how he did it, but she's staggering backwards from the vicious force of a blow, and she collides with a cracked window and it breaks under her weight. Glass embeds itself in her skin but she's not paying attention, only hits the floor, in a daze, and watches the titanic confrontation between two forces of nature, two halves of Gotham, two halves of mankind itself. It is a wonderful and horrible thing to see.

Joker gets Batman on the floor and is in the process of trying to drive an ice pick into his eye, when, of all things, Batman grabs her cane and bludgeons Joker off of him. It's not a fatal hit; he didn't even use the bladed edge, and not long after, SWAT rushes in to find two very dazed, defeated psychopaths tied up and left for the garbage pickup. They are dragged out, and though Schwarzwald isn't looking forward to what's going to happen next, Joker seems fine enough with it as they're cuffed, shackled, and set in the back of a police car. Neither of them have anything other than superficial wounds, though they're probably going to have nasty bruises later on.

Schwarzwald stares ahead of her, blankly, as Joker sits beside her hand hums something, twiddling his thumbs. After a long moment of silence, he looks over at her, paint rubbing off in places, covered in sweat, exhausted but happy, and he says to her, smiling, "Why so serious?"

"We're going to rot in the Giggle Farm, that's why I'm so -**_fucking_**- serious."

There's another moment of silence between them, before he can't help himself as the car begins to move.

"Don't be. Look at it like this: Now, you get to see what the inside of Arkham Asylum looks like!"

Schwarzwald begins to bang her head against the window, and she doesn't stop until they get to Gotham PD.


	30. Trials

"Face the camera."

She adjusts her position, holding the small sign bearing her name and number against the chest of her black and white costume, the material soiled by now with only god-knows-what. Oh, and blood. There's quite a bit of blood. Her hair is disheveled, her bottom lip is split from when she was knocked into the window and her makeup is smeared and rubbed off in places, revealing pale skin under blank white paint.

The camera flashes to capture her mugshot.

"Turn to your right."

She obliges and stares at the wall ahead of her, as the camera flashes and burns an unpleasant glowing blue spot in her peripheral. What's next? Prison? Arkham? Police officers walk in the room and cuff her hands behind her back again, instead of in front so that she could hold the sign, and she shuffles out to her cell to wait for trial or movement. Schwarzwald knows that Joker is probably not too far away, probably going through the exact same process. She wonders if he's having fun.

She doesn't have to wait long to find out.

"Schwarzy; small world, isn't it?" He says through the bars of his isolated cell, Schwarzwald now abandoned in the cell beside his. She can barely catch sight of him on her right, as he leans close to the bars to get a good look at her, as she's doing with him. Yup, he looks like he's having fun. He also looks like hell, just like she does. His hands are chained in front of him, feet shackled, now down to his patterned vest and without gloves. They took his shoes too; looks like they found out he had blades in them. Schwarzwald almost starts snickering at his socks, because, **God**; they're _hideous_.

"Damn straight." Schwarzwald sighs, shuffling over to the small bunk bed. She's apparently dangerous enough to warrant her own cell. It's small comfort as the police officers prowl by like jungle cats, giving the two of them venomous stares. Some of them even bark out insults, calling them freaks and clowns, telling them they'll rot in Arkham for the rest of their miserable lives. There's a concrete wall between Schwarzwald and Joker, though their beds are against the wall that separates their cells.

"Sleep tight, you freaks. You're getting shipped off for holding in Arkham tomorrow. Not that anyone doubts you're going to rot there." An officer tells them, sneering, and they ignore him completely as they move to sit or lie down. He looks like he's about to say something else to get their attention, but a moment later someone walks in with a bottle of champagne and all the cops celebrate. The two clowns don't get anything.

* * *

They stare at one another from across the transport van. Bulletproof steel. Armed guards sitting beside them. Chained wrists, ankles, everything.

"Great day out." Joker notes, nonchalantly. It's a wonderful day out; blue sky, nice and warm with a nice breeze, people recovering from a second ages-long reign of terror. Wonderful day out.

"I know, right?" Schwarzwald answers, twiddling her thumbs. She's nervous. Very nervous. Arkham Asylum? What would it be like? Would she be shanked by crazed prisoners? Tortured by insane, vindictive doctors? What would happen to her? She worries, panics, but examines her fingernails to keep cool, at least in appearance. The alternating blacks and whites of her nails is a calming pattern.

"Look alive, lunatics. We're here." A guard says, holding his shotgun tighter as the imposing gates open for them, and Schwarzwald's pulse quickens. She can't see it, but she can hear the gate. After a moment or two of more driving, they stop again and the doors come open. More guards, except _their_ uniforms are emblazoned with the word 'Arkham'. She walks out first, helped by a jab to the back with the shotgun the guard is toting, letting them lead her towards the towering building before her, and hesitates at the door. The place looks like a castle that Vlad Dracula would be proud of.

"Don't worry," Joker tells her as he walks past and through the doors. "We're in Wonderland now. No place in Gotham saner than here." He disappears in the doorway and Schwarzwald walks in after him, as doctors begin to swarm like wasps.

* * *

Schwarzwald sits in her room, hair damp and staring at a padded white wall. They've washed the paint from her hair, which she sort of expected, and now it's damp honey blond again. Her makeup is gone and she looks like any normal woman again. They took her contacts, them being purely decorative, and now her eyes are a lurid green again. They took her costume and gave her comfortable, baggy, white cotton clothes, the patient uniform of Arkham, apparently.

Oh yes, and she's drugged out of her mind off of tranquilizers so that they could do all of this to her. She just stares ahead, blankly, blinking now and then but mostly just staring like a zombie. There's noise outside her door and she staggers over to it, drunkenly, staring out the tiny window in the thick metal door. This is apparently a hallway for patient rooms, or maybe it's a hallway for isolation? Maybe these rooms are for the ones they say are the most dangerous? She's not really all that dangerous, not unless Joker tells her to be. Maybe they're moving her later. Or maybe she's here in this puffy white room forever. Until her trial. And then she'll come back.

She can't see anything outside her room. Who's moving? Who's out there? She hasn't got a clue. So Schwarzwald shuffles back to her bed and stares at the ceiling as if it's a Van Gogh painting.

* * *

Two months later, there's her trial. It's a media circus, though most of the reporters are probably here for Joker's trial, happening not too long after hers. Still, she's the woman who went mad and joined up with the Joker; she's a sad, sad little creature sitting in her nice suit that's been loaned to her, blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, green eyes wide and alert. Her government-appointed lawyer sits next to her, nervous, knowing that there's only one way she's going to ever possibly win this case.

Schwarzwald, once again Michelle King, pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. Joker might not want to admit it, but Schwarzwald knows she's crazy.

It's not hard to prove it, either. The prosecution tries to show that she was in her right mind the entire time. But then they have footage of her running around in her Schwarzwald getup, generally acting insane. And the defense has Julia's old therapist, when she was still Michelle. She's still legally Michelle, but not in her mind she's not. Michelle is gone and Julia is only a disguise. The shrink testifies about her general dissatisfaction with life in general, and Julia is almost happy that she was so forthcoming with the therapist who now talks about her random babbling of rather…irreverent things, at times. The state mental health doctor who interviewed Julia before her trial gives her own evaluation of Julia's mental health.

Needless to say, it's not that good.

"Stockholm syndrome, with a very close attachment to the Joker," She says, reading from her papers. "She's said that she wishes to work for him until her death, as payment for…she says she's repaying him for helping drive her insane."

She shows the Rorschach inkblot test results. They're not very good either.

"When it came to this one, she said, 'Two puppies running away from an explosion'. With this one, 'Pagliaccio, crying for himself'. Here, we had, 'Cats screaming like babies in the night'. This one prompted, 'Dead dog in alleyway, tire tread on burst stomach'. And with this one, it was, 'two angels screwing in the stratosphere'. The Joker gave a similar response with that last card, almost to the word."

She testifies. She calmly states that she's completely insane. They ask her how she knows this, and she gives a great Cheshire Cat smile, and says, "Oh, we're all mad here." They make her get down after quoting the Lewis Carrol.

Charlie testifies next, and is the prosecution's glass cannon. He tells her that the smiling woman named Julia gave him a button to press that would get rid of the mean boy who hurt him. The jury turns hateful eyes to Julia, who stares very blankly at her lap.

The defense strikes back. They go through all the long, drawn-out processes, and by God, they pull out the biggest guns they have. The next witness they call is the Joker himself.

He's still blond and pretty, and Julia stares because she's probably never going to get another chance like this. She guesses that he's around twenty eight, maybe early thirties. He might be younger than she is. That makes her feel very old, and very useless; a thirty four year old woman can't keep up with someone that may or may not be younger than her. Of course, this is Joker that she's thinking about; she knows that he's still going to be superior to her no matter how fast or strong or crazy she gets, so she's kind of accepting of that.

He's just so damn _pretty_, though.

The media goes wild when they find out that Gotham's biggest psycho and his blond ditz lackey are in the same court room, and the trial turns into a soap opera with all the sob stories given about her history of sexual abuse and kidnapping and all that, her horrible and unhappy life living simultaneously in the gutters and in the stars, how the evil, horrible psycho Joker kidnapped the poor woman and warped her mind beyond repair.

The trial is a soap opera. Joker turns it into a circus.

He, very casually, explains that yes, he made her this way, and that yes, he had fun doing it. The defense outlines that Julia can't help herself that she's mad, can't help what she does, because Joker manipulates her mind, poor fragile girl that she is. Joker illustrates this himself when he tells her to bark like a dog, and she does. It's blackly hilarious.

Nobody wants to cross-examine the Joker. And so they don't.

The trial wraps up after two weeks of testimony in the court war for her sanity, and the jury spends fourteen hours deliberating. Joker waves to Julia and she waves back. She's in a suit. He's in his white Arkham jumpsuit. She's probably going to be in one too, later on. The jury comes back, and it's unanimous. Guilty. It's only half a day before the sentence is announced.

"Michelle King, you are to be sent to Arkham Asylum for the rest of your days, to be treated for your mental illnesses."

Well woohoo. She's going back to Arkham, just like the Joker is. There really isn't any argument what his trial is going to end in. Again. Julia wonders if they'd have decided her mad quicker if they'd have let her wear her costume, like she asked. Probably.

* * *

When she gets back to Arkham and is officially committed, they immediately perform a psychiatric evaluation.

"So…Ms. King…" The doctor begins, as Julia sits in her chair across from him. She's very docile, shows no threat of attack.

"Call me Julia. Better yet, call me Schwarzwald." She states, innocently enough, twiddling her thumbs. The paint is chipping off of them. That's a shame.

"Your name is Michelle King. Not Schwarzwald." The doctor corrects her, writing something down. She shrugs, but obviously doesn't believe him. He continues. "What is your family status? Marital status?"

"Single, and my biological parents are dead. My adoptive parents are dead too. I'm dead to my adoptive brother, who is alive but hates me. No kids, nothing like that. I'm not in a relationship right now. Not romantic, anyway." She narrates in a dull monotone, and the doctor can't tell if she's imitating him or not.

"And all of these symptoms began when?"

"Well, they've probably been there the entire time. Probably. Maybe. I don't know. I think. Anyway, it all started as a child. I really wanted this puppy, see."

"Please take this seriously."

"I know someone that would probably punch you in the face with a knife for being so serious. Not me though. Anyway, I grew up a poor Latino child in the Bronx. I had to prostitute myself for money to pay for my druggie parents and my crack baby little brother's medicine. My horrible parents spent all the money for his medicine on more crack, but that's not the point. Eventually I went to school, but all the mean children called me a mick or spick or something. It might've been 'white nigger', though; I can't be too sure. But I knew I was always smarter than them, oh, I _knew_; when we took a field trip to tour through this college, I could see a half-finished equation on the board, a real difficult math equation, like…trigonometry, even. And I could solve it. With my mind."

"Mm…hm…" The doctor answers, scribbling something down and staring at her from over the top of his glasses. He can't tell if she's joking or if she's serious. Julia continues onwards.

"Then when I was in high school, like any other redheaded white girl in Gotham City," She's back to reality again. Maybe she's lapsing into psychosomatic delusions? He'll have to note that one, too. "And then I had a stalker. He was creepy, too. Broke into our house one day, we had a nice mansion in the Beverly Hills, and killed my parents with a garden hose. Oh, and my crack baby brother was dead by now, too. Just throwing that out there. Yeah, he killed them with that machete while wearing the hockey mask, and camo pants, and…where was I?" She stares at him, blankly for a moment.

"Camo pants."

"Oh, right. He kidnapped me and locked me in his basement, and raped me every night for three years. I didn't see the sun for those long three years. Then…I killed him and escaped." Julia becomes morose, serious at this, staring at the floor. The doctor begins to think that she's getting serious about this again. Then she starts talking.

"I went to clown college after that. Lovely place, that is. I'd show you my jester's license, but I'm afraid I lost it when I was _clowning_ around."

She takes this moment to smile like a fool and play her invisible roll-on snare drum. The doctor's seen ones like this before; he's already suspecting that she's lost touch with reality at some point in time. It's only under the influence of the drugs they've given her that she really lets down her guard and shows this. He nods, and waits for her to continue.

"Aw, you're no fun. Anyway, after that, I was working as a clown. Clowns clowns clowns; did you ever know that I used to have caulrophobia? That's right; I was terrified of clowns as a kid. And then I became one. Funny! Anyway…yeah. I worked lots of odd jobs until I met the Anderson family. They were nice. Jack and Alma Anderson, the two nicest people you ever met. They eventually adopted me officially. Then they died. Everyone I love **_dies_**!!"

She wails the last part, suddenly, and after a moment, she opens her eyes to see the doctor sliding a needle into her arm. She lets him do it.

"What was that?" She asks, when he's done and disposes of the needle.

"Tranquilizer." He answers.

"Oh…okay. Anyway?"

"Then they died."

"Everyone I love **_dies_**!!" She wails again, and the doctor writes more on his sheet. After a moment, she pops back to normal and begins talking freely again. "After that, Nathan kicked me out of the penthouse. And I had to get real jobs. Clown, bookkeeper, dinner whore. Yannow."

He waits for her to continue, already seeing her beginning to relax, and her eyes glaze over.

"After that…I did that for awhile. And then Joker kidnapped me. And then more things happened. And I helped…do something. And got caught. Then me and him wore nurse's uniforms to blow up a hospital…I think. After that he got arrested and I escaped. Then he caught me and killed my dogs. Then I escaped again. Then he caught me again and beat me up. Then Michael Keegan…oh yeah, he's the guy that made me out to be a crazy bitch. That hurt a lot. Then he tried to kill me and I had to shoot him. Then I found out that his sister is blind and crippled and is probably going into the poor house because of me."

She stares off at the wall, blankly, and the doctor waits. After a moment, Julia looks back at him again, suddenly.

"And then I went crazy. Joker helped me back and I went crazy and I kind of liked it. It was fun to go crazy like that…I didn't care about anything anymore but the fun. Didn't have to worry about…responsibilities…guilt…I was happy."

He continues to write about her general status. Her appearance, mannerisms, the fact that her memory seems…fading. Everything he can observe. When she finishes, he sets the clipboard down and calls in a nurse.

"I think that will be enough for today, Ms. King. You're going to want to rest in your room, after all." Julia nods at this, dazedly, and for the first time in a long time, tries to coherently remember how her life has played out, in chronological order. She can't. There are blank spots, and all that she does remember can't be connected in chronological order. She tells the doctor this, as the nurses lead her back to her room. When she's being escorted, she passes Joker walking with a very pretty blond woman, and it looks like she's a doctor here. They look very comfortable with one another.

That's sort of weird.

Julia doesn't think about it much longer as she walks into her room and lies down on the bed, proceeding to stare at the wall again. It's floating like waves.


	31. Terrors

When Schwarzwald meets Jonathan Crane, she thinks he seems like an okay sort of guy.

She sits in the dining room of the asylum at suppertime, chewing on bland paste that masquerades as food with a Styrofoam spork. On a Styrofoam tray. They really don't give the inmates any chances, do they? Schwarzwald sits in her seat between two other inmates, the one on her left drooling and the one on her right ignoring her completely. Concerning her treatment, things are going…slow, to put it very brightly.

The treatments for her consist of trying to build her own personality back up, trying to get her to accept that she's not Schwarzwald, she's Michelle King. They try to tell her, and convince her, that she doesn't need Joker and that he's a very bad influence on her. They try to get her to respond to the name Michelle.

Progress is glacial.

Schwarzwald is alone at dinnertime. Not really, not physically; there's an entire section of the inmates eating at the time, and plenty of heavily armed guards to make them play nice. But she doesn't know anybody here. Joker is taking his dinner with that pretty blond doctor; they're always together. Schwarzy doesn't mind; she's fine with being alone. The doctors don't let her see Joker anyway. He's a 'bad influence on her psychological health'.

Put bluntly, they don't want him anywhere near her because she regresses back to her lackey status when she talks to him.

Arkham? It's absolutely horrible. The entire building is created and run by madness and fear; inmates are constantly terrified and Schwarzwald knows that at least some of them must have gone even more insane for being here. The hallways are dark, claustrophobic; there's writing one some of them, mad gibberish that disquiets the soul. The guards are heavily armed, and half of them are…to put it easily, they're quite vicious. They don't like their jobs, apparently, and some take it out on inmates. The doctors are indifferent, and only want to do their jobs. Well, most of them. The ones that aren't play favorites, like Joker and his pretty doctor. When Schwarzwald asked, one of the doctors said that her name was Dr. Quinzel.

This place drives men mad. That's pretty bad, when an asylum can drive madmen even madder.

Schwarzwald herself has her lonely little padded cell, a dark little room, and she's all alone in it. The eggshell-tone sheets on her bed are stained with what looks like vomit, blood, or urine. Possibly all three. Her pillow has bite marks from the previous resident, and she keeps finding very thin layers of what looks like white dust on her sheets and pillow cover, all over the room. The doctor's offices are lit too brightly with harsh fluorescent lights, so that the patients feel like they're either on an operating table or in a porno.

It's not a very nice place at all.

Her sleep is plagued by nightmares. Shapes in the night rending her with long claws. Madmen cornering her in a dark asylum hallway and doing unspeakable things to her. Joker finally becoming sick of her and deciding to put her to the knife. By the end of the first month, she's a twitching, nervous mess with dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. This place isn't a respite. This place is more horrible than she could ever have imagined. When the doctors note her nervousness, her twitching, her jumpiness and lack of sleep, they drug her to near catatonia. They tell her that they're going to fix her, make her better again. The pills do things to her. It feels like she has writhing maggots under her skin, and after a day or two of this horrific sensation, she gets her hands on a shard of broken glass from a corner of one of the hallways, probably from a broken window, and she slices up her arms to try and mask the crawling sensation with pain. When they find out, they tranq her, wrap up her arms, and then they snap her in a straightjacket, the old type. The 1800's asylum type.

She spends three days in it, thrashing, screaming, charging at the walls and the door. It takes her those three days to realize that she needs to be quiet, lie down, and not act dangerous anymore for them to let her out of it. When they take it off of her, she spends hours in bed, wailing in agony from how stiff the muscles in her arms have become, and the blood having pooled in her elbows. It's excruciating to move even the slightest bit.

After two months, she's hallucinating often. Her nerves are so frayed that any noise provokes a near panic attack. Her hallucinations are mainly shadows stalking after her as she buzzes around her room, trying to outrun them. She sees things out of the corner of her eye, and they're not there when she turns to look at them. Sometimes, she wakes up and sees people crouched in the fetal position at the foot of her bed, shapes of pure black with perfectly round, pupil-less yellow eyes staring straight through her, and she screams. She runs to the door and screeches bloody murder that there are people in her room. When she looks back, they're gone. The doctors give her more medication to stifle the hallucinations. It has no effect.

There's only one little, tiny, microscopic thing that Schwarzwald looks forward to nowadays. And that's group therapy. Once every day, they take a select few residents and put them all in the room together to talk out their feelings and problems. Schwarzwald gets her turn once a week. That first week she goes, she meets the people in her small 'therapy group'. Suzanne Adams is a schizophrenic that snapped one day and decided to light a school on fire after moving debris in front of the doors. Fifty students died, along with five teachers. Edward Addal has said that God told him to kill prostitutes to keep the whores from spreading their sin. He killed twenty three. Charles Kingston murdered fifteen people and cannibalized their remains, in an attempt to gain pure enlightenment and to absorb the knowledge that each person had inside of them. Michelle King has shown total dependency on infamous criminal the Joker, and randomly flips between a calm woman, though during her stay in Arkham she's become quite nervous and a bit more unstable than before, and a dangerously psychotic alter-ego called Schwarzwald, who is known to be inclined towards manipulating others into mass murder. Recently, she's been hallucinating and cutting herself. The last patient in this lunatic circle-jerk is Jonathan Crane. Everyone knows about _him_. Except the out-of-the-loop Schwarzwald, of course.

"Well," The doctor begins, all the patients situated in a circle so that they can face one another. Their steel chairs are bolted to the floor. Schwarzwald is twitching. Suzanne is staring off into space, drugged out of her mind. Edward is drooling. Charles' eyes dart rapidly between everyone else in the small room. Crane is detached and calm. "Let's begin, all of you. How has your week been?" Bless this doctor's poor heart, he's trying so hard to be enthusiastic and encouraging.

"Aristotle foot dam foblabblig." Suzanne murmurs, head lolling against the back of the chair.

"Fine. Fine. Fine fine fine." Charles states, his voice cracking and jumping an octave at the last word.

"Mmmuh." Edward gets out.

"They're still in my room. The shadows. There's white powder all over everything in my room." Schwarzwald states, her knees pulled up into the chair with her and her arms wrapped around them. Her hair is oily and her eyes are wild, fingers clawed, nails broken from clawing at the floor. The doctor cocks an eyebrow at her statement. She's generally the one that's very detached from reality, they say, but she's never talked about white powder before.

"White powder? What about the white powder?" He asks, gently, and she turns lurid, crazed eyes to him.

"It's very thin, you see. Like air. It's so thin and fine that it's almost invisible. You have to look at it in the right light to see it, floating through. But it's there. It's there. You believe me?"

"Your room has been examined very thoroughly. There can't be white-" The doctor begins to explain, before Schwarzwald interrupts.

"There is! It's there, I swear!!" She shrieks, before noticing that Crane is staring at her, very intensely. "Do _you_ believe me?"

He doesn't answer her, only looks back to the doctor. The man in the coat is writing something down on a legal pad for later, and then turns to Crane. "And how has your week been, mister Crane?"

"As it always is." He says, and his voice is so calm and quiet that Schwarzwald strains to hear him. He's always been that quiet, in every one of their group sessions. She can't imagine what he could've done to get thrown in Arkham, with how calm and withdrawn he is. The doctor is beginning to speak again before a phone rings and he moves to answer it, a moment later slamming the phone down and grabbing a small kit. Tranquilizers.

"Emergency down the hall; none of you move, the door is locking and the cameras are still on, so we'll _know_ if you do anything." He barks, hurrying out the door. It locks behind him. Charles stands and paces over to the corner of the room, sitting down there facing the wall. Suzanne remains in her drooling catatonic state. Edward lies down on the floor, on his stomach, and doesn't move. Schwarzwald stands and begins to pace in a tight circle, trying to relieve herself of this constant feeling of needing to move, jitter, twitch; it calms her somewhat, relieves the discomfort of her constant nerves. Everything is terrifying; she's afraid almost all of the time, though it's most powerful when she's in her room.

After a few minutes of this pacing, she sees that Crane is staring at her. It's like he's examining her very closely, like the doctors do. It's scary; Schwarzwald backs up, keeping her eyes on him. He's been looking at her like that for a few weeks now, at the meetings, but since she's talked this time he's looking even harder than usual.

"…Ms. King." He says, and she jumps hard, heart racing. Her hands are balled into the sleeves of her outfit, tightly, as she stares.

"…What?" She breathes, wide eyes focused on any movement he makes. He, very slightly, gestures for her to come over to him, and after a minute of silent deliberation, she does. Very slowly. She stops about five feet from his chair, now watching him with a slight sort of wonder.

"Come here." He orders, a slight tone of impatience, maybe annoyance, in his voice, and she does. It's that Joker-induced subservience that makes her do it. She leans down next to his seat and he takes her face in his hands, looking closely at her eyes, feeling her pulse.

"Have you had any hallucinations recently? Seen odd things, heard any noises that you shouldn't have? Explain about this 'white dust' in your room." Crane is speaking in a doctor's voice, cold and detached, medical. Schwarzwald wonders if he's ever been a doctor.

"Seen…shadows…people in my room…and whispering! There's _whispering_. Moaning. Hissing. Screaming. Walls make faces, growl at me, try to bite. Arms come out of the floor and grab at me. The shadow people have claws and teeth and they're night. They're the night. They're blackness." Her voice comes out as a whisper, hurried; nobody has believed her before now, and whoever this guy is, he seems to want to listen. He seems to believe her. "The powder…I can't move too much, or it flies into the air and the people and the whispering comes back."

"…I see." He says, noting that her pupils are too large, and the green is only a very thin ring around huge black pupils. She's very pale, twitching, her breath is shuddering, and she's hallucinating. He has a hypothesis on why this is.

**_She's got a taste of the juice, Jonny-boy_**_. _The rasping voice in his head states what he already knows, and there's a note of sick amusement in it. Crane mentally sighs at having it back. Of course Scarecrow had to chime in. **_How long you think she's been sucking it in?_**

_'However long she's been in that room. You know that. It must have gotten into a ventilation shaft somehow and deposited in the room.'_

"Ms. King, how long have you been in that room?" Crane asks coolly, letting go of her. She straightens up and clasps hands in front of her mouth, twitching still. There's loud noise down the hall and it's making her incredibly jumpy.

"T…two…two months…" She states, voice shaking. Crane mentally winces at the cacophonic, sharp laughter of the other in his head.

**_Two months! Can't be very much in there, if she's still together enough to walk and talk. Leave her in there; let's see what happens. You want to, you know you do; it'll be worth a good laugh._**

"Why? C-can you fix it??" Schwarzwald jerks forward, hands on the arm of Crane's chair, leaning in with glassy, crazed green eyes. He knows that she's gotten some of the fear toxin in her system, though it's apparently a much diluted amount due to having moved throughout the cell and settled. If it were any stronger, she would definitely have gone completely and totally mad by now, and she's probably going to if she isn't moved out of the cell. He can either let someone know and wonder if they're going to test the room or he can let it go and watch what happens.

**_Come on, Jonny. You haven't had a good time in months, and here's the chance, right here! If you want, I could do it instead, if you can't handle it. _**Scarecrow rasps, and he sounds like he's having fun. Crane isn't too fond of the idea of letting his other half take control for any amount of time, and so looks at Schwarzwald again, speaking coolly.

"It's nothing; most likely just a side-effect of the medicines they give you." He says calmly, and can almost see the hope shattering like a pane of glass in her eyes. Scarecrow cracks into high-pitched laughter in his head at the pathetic sight, as the doctor walks back in, coat twisted off to the side, pressing the intercom on his desk in the office adjoining.

"Get the escorts; too much work to deal with." He states, and Schwarzwald moves back to her chair before the doctor can spot her out of it. Not too much later, the guards move in and begin to escort the patients out, Schwarzwald looking more and more terrified of the idea of going back in her room. Crane watches her carefully as they lead her down the claustrophobic hallways, jittering and sobbing. He wonders, for a moment, as they begin to escort him to his own cell, if the effects of long-term exposure to the toxin are permanent or not.

* * *

**((Alright, guys; did I get Crane right or not? It's kind of been awhile since I've seen Begins; I think I've got a good hold on things, but then again, it _has_ been awhile. And tell me; is the idea of someone getting stuck in a room contaminated with his fear toxin a stupid idea? Just sort of trying to make things a bit longer and more interesting, since it would be a waste to rush through a pleasant visit to Arkham.))**


	32. Toxins

Three months.

Schwarzwald spends three months in Hell.

Everything is terrifying; everyone and everything causes sheer panic within her, makes her heart race like a champion horse. People look like fanged monsters, walls and shadows are horrors unimaginable, she catches sight of herself in a mirror once when she bathes and her own face is that of an eyeless, rotting corpse, lips sewn shut with thick black wire and parted enough for her teeth to be visible, those teeth jagged and broken and bloody, maggots pouring out of her empty black sockets. When she opens her mouth to scream in terror, her corpse-self in the mirror opens its mouth too and the black wire strains and rips her rotting purple-tinted lips, and blackish green rot runs down her chin like blood.

By the time the orderlies rush in, she's in the fetal position in the corner, screaming through her sobs.

Crane watches her crumble. Scarecrow takes extreme pleasure in watching. The two alters aren't antagonistic; they switch on the fly, when it's needed. When they talk in their group therapy meetings, Scarecrow takes over and manages to convince her that snorting the white filmy powder in her room will stop the hallucinations.

He almost dies laughing in the back of Crane's mind when she comes back the next week, catatonic and in a straightjacket, scratches down her cheeks from where she's clawed herself. Crane himself is slightly annoyed because all the laughing gives him a migraine.

Eventually though, Crane and his malicious other self begin to bore of Schwarzwald. He also, very slightly, pities the dazed, strained and pathetic woman when he goes through old associates still working at Arkham and gets a hold of her file. So, not as an act of mercy but more out of boredom, he talks with her. The doctors write off her hallucinations as a psychotic condition, but Crane knows what they really are.

"Tell me about the things you see." He requests, as they sit together at dinner. He more or less wants something to do here and wants to see if he can crack Schwarzwald. It's something to occupy himself with.

"Horrible…things…darkness…corpses…toothed shadows…" Schwarzwald murmurs, staring blankly at nothing at all, her voice quiet and dead. Crane nods very slightly.

"And these are things you possess phobias of, correct?"

"Darkness…yeah." She says, staring at the mash of whatever's on her tray.

**_Hey, tell her that she could go blind._**

"There is a possibility of blindness, from the symptoms you've described and the medications you say that you take." Crane says, smoothly, and Schwarzwald turns paper white. Dark satisfaction builds deep in the good doctor's chest. He keeps a calm, apathetic air about him as he speaks again. "Michelle, you worked for the Joker, correct?"

"Mmm." Schwarzwald murmurs, chewing nervously on her Styrofoam spork. Crane wonders, briefly, if she's hallucinating right now.

"Has he spoken with you since your arrivals at Arkham?"

"No. The doctors won't let us speak. I think he's been in isolation though, so he's probably alone too. He probably misses me." She adds that last part in a near-whisper, as if she's trying to convince herself only.

Crane smirks very slightly, watching her play with her sleeve. He's not sure who it is, but he thinks that it's the Crane half that sees the opportunity for emotional devastation here, and it's Scarecrow that decides to seize the opportunity. "Are you sure? He seems very friendly with Harleen. Doctor Quinzel, to you."

**_Jonny-boy, you're so nasty. Thought I was the only one with it in me._** Scarecrow croons, and it sounds like he's doing it right in Crane's ear as Schwarzwald begins to wonder and worry. It's very obvious in her eyes.

"You don't think…Joker is replacing me…do you?" Her voice is soft, sad. So pathetic.

"From what I've heard, his moods are flippant at best." Crane deadpans, feeling Scarecrow's intense amusement building. "It's quite possible."

She wails, childishly, and slumps over against him, her head on his shoulder. He puts his hands on her shoulders and pushes her off, irritated. She should be grateful that she wasn't committed when _he_ was in charge, because if she would've pulled these sorts of stunts on him back in those glory days, she would've been sucking down a good, concentrated dose of fear gas with a growling Scarecrow watching her writhe.

Good thing she and he aren't in that era of Arkham. Regrettable, actually, but good for dear Schwarzwald.

"Don't touch me." He snaps, though it's still in his very quiet nature, and she lays her head down on the table and begins to wail. Scarecrow growls in Crane's ear, dangerously.

**_Shut her up. Shut it up. You know how to do it right here and now, so do it. _**He snarls, venom in his voice, and it's too easy for Crane to reach over, laying a hand on her shoulder, and reach for her neck. She slumps against his side, sobbing into his Arkham jumpsuit, and Crane feels his temper flare at the touch and it only increases when he feels tears soaking through the cotton. His hand closes on the back of her neck and for a moment, he's filled with a huge urge to just snap her neck right then and there. A hard twist to the left, she goes down, lights out. Sure, they'll probably put him in solitary for a long time, maybe a year at the most, but who cares? He's going to be here for life anyway.

**_Come on, Crane. Kill it. Do it! _**Scarecrow snarls, as she lets out a fresh set of sobs, and Crane presses his thumb hard on her pressure point. She slumps, and he pushes her off of him and ignores her as she falls to the floor. Orderlies come and check on her, and they assume she's passed out from exhaustion, which would make sense; there's no way to tell if she's gotten any sleep at all for a few nights.

**_You pussy._**

Crane ignores Scarecrow's humph, his insults, and his sulking, and merely finishes his Arkham dinner as the orderlies drag Schwarzwald out and to her room again. He doesn't, however, want Scarecrow to stay in a foul mood, because that means that he'll be in a foul mood too, and the both of them in foul moods isn't good at all.

_'Scarecrow…how about a compromise?'_ He really shouldn't have to bargain with a separate personality to not get in a pissy mood, but he has to.

**_Yeah? What?_** The alternate personality barks, definitely in a terrible mood now. He wanted blood, or a severely and grotesquely twisted neck. Neither him nor Crane like being touched. At all. Crane can at least pretend to deal with it, but it irks Scarecrow to no freaking end for someone to touch him when they're not wildly grabbing for support while a psychotropic fear toxin kicks in, about two seconds before the mask turns into a growling, fanged horror and they either scream or go completely silent from catatonic terror.

_'There are always the extras.'_ Is all Crane needs to say, before Scarecrow goes silent for a moment, and then, begins to snicker. And then it turns into malicious laughter.

**_The extras! Why didn't I think of that? Jonny-boy, you're a wonder, you know that? A sick, twisted monster of a wonder, but a wondrous one. Upper extra, or lower?_**

_'Upper, of course.' _Crane sighs, standing as the guards begin to lead them back to their rooms. _'It will only take a moment and then…you know what happens.'_

**_You'll have to hold your breath, close your eyes, and walk backwards._**

_'Did you think I planned to poison myself? I've had enough of our little toy; once in a lifetime is most assuredly enough.'_

**_Hah. Tell that to the twitchy broad. But no; you want to examine her, don'cha? Can't blame you. Can't say I wouldn't want to get my hands on her, either._**

Of course Scarecrow would have to say that. Crane sighs, under his breath_. 'I'm not that sort of man, Scarecrow. I want no part of something like that._' He doesn't want anything remotely sexual out of the woman; he's very controlled, can keep a hold on those sorts of urges. Scarecrow, unfortunately, happens to embody all of his negative traits, and that happens to be one of them.

**_Just let me have ten, twenty minutes with her, alone. C'mon, Jonny-Jonny, ten minutes all to myself, and then I let you take things again. I just want a test ride; no harm in that, right?_**

_'Lecher_.'

**_Takes one to know one, Jonny-boy. Takes us to know us, right, mister shrink?_**

Crane doesn't answer as he walks very deliberately down the hallway with his guard, who isn't paying attention. Crane slips slightly ahead of him, around a tight corner, and has enough time to very quickly hurry and find one of his many little hiding places, and grab what he wants out of it. By the time the guard strolls around the corner, Crane is walking slowly to his cell door and waiting to be let in. He walks in when the door is opened, and plots with the rasping, delirious voice inside his head.

* * *

A week passes, and Schwarzwald walks into group therapy stringy-haired and dull-eyed. She's spotted Joker passing in the hallway, without his lovely doctor for once, and she stops him on the way to her therapy. The guards keep pushing them on their respective paths, but the two manage to talk for a brief minute.

"Joker." Schwarzwald is too tired, too exhausted to manage any enthusiasm. Joker, blond and pretty, looks at her with a curious expression, as if he can't quite recognize her.

"Schwarzy. You look like a drowned rat. Having any, ah…problems?" He asks, quite curiously, and she nods slightly as her guard seems to stop and chat with Joker's. They don't give a fuck about whether these two are supposed to be talking or not, and that's very good. Thank the lord for small mercies, like shitty guards.

"Hallucinations. Arkham…you said it was _Wonderland_. It's **horrible** here." She whines, childishly, as she gets whenever she's around him. He chuckles, a dry and raspy laugh, glancing down the hallway.

"Schwarzy, _dollface_, I never said it was a _good_ Wonderland." Joker laughs, before turning to face the approaching doctor Quinzel. She's a very lovely woman, Schwarzwald notes; when she approaches Joker, his posture seems to relax and so does hers, before she looks to the guards.

"What are you waiting about? Do your jobs." She seems tense, eager to get them away. One begins to lead the Joker and is immediately cut off by the impatient doctor. "I'm taking the Joker, as usual. Go, go on. Take that one." She gestures to Schwarzwald, flippantly, before looking to Joker as one guard leaves and the other grabs Schwarzwald by the upper arm and begins to drag. Before she loses sight of them, however, Schwarzwald is sure that she sees Quinzel's eyes soften somewhat and Joker moving closer than he probably should be.

Understandably, Schwarzwald is very dispirited.

She walks into the group therapy room to see only Crane and a new doctor. The other chairs are empty. She sits down in hers, as Crane remains still, cool, and ignoring her completely. The door is shut behind them and the doctor looks up between Schwarzwald, twitchy and nervous, and Crane, calm and detached. After a minute of silence, he looks between them.

"I have no idea what we're going to do with two of you, and I don't really give a damn either. Sit here and be silent; I have work to do." He stands, walking to the door. Does everyone just up and leave the room at random spaces in time? Maybe they trust Crane to keep control of the other, drugged-out patients. Or maybe they just don't expect Crane or Schwarzwald to do anything crazy, though with Schwarzwald's condition, that's a stupid sort of idea. Or maybe they just don't care. Probably that last one. The good doctor leaves the room, and Crane stands quietly, walking around the room. It's the first time Schwarzwald has seen him leave his chair during these sessions.

"Michelle." He says her name, coldly, while he walks to the door the doctor has just left through. Schwarzwald glances at him, suspicion currently overriding the slowly growing feeling of unease and fear. "Tell me…what are you afraid of?"

The lock clicks shut from the inside. Schwarzwald immediately begins to panic.

"Wh…what are you doing?" She stands from her chair and begins to slowly back up, as he keeps his back to her. She doesn't see what he's hidden under the sleeve of his Arkham uniform, and is now running his finger along.

"Questions have answers." Crane demands, coolly. Schwarzwald's body is beginning to tremor, very slightly.

"U-um…the dark…insects…_corpses_…" She gasps the last word, feeling her heart beginning to pick up pace as he turns around, his eyes flickering behind the lenses of his glasses.

_'Ready to take the show?'_

**_Anytime, Jonny-boy._**

"So…_Schwarzy_." Crane says now, but his voice is sickly sweet and a malicious smile is on his lips. He walks towards her now not with small, quick steps, but quick, predatory strides. Schwarzwald immediately freezes, pure terror in her poisonously green eyes, and she sidles along the wall away from him, terrified. "Oh, now don't be that way, _hunny_. I just want to **talk**." He croons, and as she tries to run he chases her down easily, grabbing her blond hair and tossing her into the wall.

"C-Crane?!" Schwarzwald yelps, confused, afraid, and 'Crane' laughs sharply.

"No no no, Schwarzy dear; think of me as the half of Jonathan Crane that got him into this asylum. Call me _Scarecrow_, honey." He snarls, and when she tries to slip away from him, he grabs her by the shoulder and pins her to the wall, leaning back and out of range of what he's about to do with her. "Pay attention; we're about to learn a lesson."

With that he sprays her in the face with a burst of white gas, leaning back enough and pulling one arm up to his mouth, breathing through the crook of it as he steps back and away from the cloud. Schwarzwald gasps and wheezes; then, things start to go hazy, wild.

"Welcome to Hell." He growls, and he doesn't even need the voice changer to terrify her with those words. Though he kind of wishes he had his mask still; nothing quite like leering in someone's face with _that_ thing on. Scarecrow, for a moment, wonders if they've still got it as evidence or if they've trashed it.

_'It's probably still around here somewhere.'_

**_Then we'll just have to find it later, won't we Jonny? Oh, look alive! She's coming back._**

As soon as Schwarzwald looks up at Crane, she shrieks in unholy terror. He's some sort of ungodly abomination, skin a pale, bloated corpse purple, jaw hanging completely open like a snake detaching its jaw before devouring a meal alive, rows of crooked, twisted inch to two inch long teeth framing a black mouth with a long, lolling tongue. But dear god, it's the eyes. They're almost completely white; no iris, but one tiny, tiny pupil smack dab in the middle of the sclera. When he laughs, the grotesque jaw flaps inhumanely and he grabs her shoulders and pulls her right into the horrific face, laughing, breathing over her face.

"Tell me what you see!" Scarecrow laughs, and she screams blue murder as he touches her. He shakes her, before throwing her to the floor so she can scamper away, wheezing and coughing and crying and all manner of noisy things. He grabs her by the ankle and twists her around, so that she can watch him grin and drag her back towards him, predatorily. He's no longer what he was before; now he's a corpse, exactly the kind she's terrified of; rotting, oozing pus, maggots crawling around inside holes in his flesh, mouth wide open in a horrifyingly wide grin with rotting black teeth and flies crawling out of his throat and across his face. His eyes are empty sockets full of buzzing wasps that crawl out and across his face, and they ooze sick yellow pus that runs down his cheeks like tears.

Schwarzwald doesn't even hear the doctor at the door, banging on it, demanding to be let in, before screaming at somebody to get the keys for the fucking door. Scarecrow knows he doesn't have much time left, and seeks to make the best of it.

"Did you know that pure terror is a very powerful thing?" He asks her, quietly and with a slight smile, and the hungering visage of a corpse looms in closer, as Schwarzwald continues to scream and shriek and cry and howl and beat at him, thrashing like an animal. "Of course you do." He can feel her pulse through the tight grip he now has on her throat and her heart is racing so fast that it's bound to fail soon, if he doesn't stop. He doesn't want to, however.

_'Scarecrow, that's enough. You'll never have any more of your fun if she dies and they isolate us.' _Crane reprimands and Scarecrow groans aloud.

**_You know what? You need to live a little; quit being such a bitch to the system._**

"Besides, Schwarzy is having so much **fun**, _aren't you?!_" He laughs in her face, his own face just inches from hers, and she screams blue murder. Actually, she's not even screaming anymore, not really; she's making guttural animal noises of primal terror, she's foaming at the mouth, she's gagging on bile.

This is a good concentrated dose, and it's not just for fun, though that's a big part of it too; it's an experiment. Does she have any immunity to the toxin now that she's been exposed to it for so long? Will she recover on her own, or will she stay in this state until her heart gives out or she just goes catatonic? Crane and Scarecrow sure aren't going to use any antitoxin, mainly because they don't have any, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't cure her. No fun in that, is there? She won't be useful as an experiment subject if they do that, anyway.

The door flies open and guards rush them, grabbing Scarecrow and dragging him away as he laughs, before he fades into Crane again and they shove him out the door. Orderlies, doctors, are swarming Schwarzwald, prepping tranquilizers, holding her down as she thrashes at all the corpses surrounding her now. Her naturally nervous state, as a side-effect of being in contact with trace amounts of the toxin for so long, has been amplified ten, a hundredfold. She stares blankly at the ceiling as they turn her head to keep her from drowning in vomit, foam on her lips and her body twitching, but limp now.

Of course they're going to interrogate Crane on exactly what he's done to her, though when they review the camera footage, they'll know. But with Schwarzwald, all they can do is drag her catatonic form to her room and strap her down, turning her head to the side while vomit and drool and bile and blood from how she's bitten her tongue and the inside of her cheeks to shreds run from her lips, and hope that she recovers.

* * *

Scarecrow and Crane sit in their isolation room, straightjacket tighter than usual, and they wait. It really depends all on Schwarzwald if her mind can recover from that hard a blow; if she recovers, it's a breakthrough in research on the toxin's effects on a long-term basis. If she doesn't…

Oh well, it broke the monotony.


	33. Reunions

It takes a good month, but eventually, Schwarzwald is able to move around normally again. She, at first, needs to be tranquilized all of the time to a point where she isn't terrified to near death by any moderately loud noise. She has been moved to a new room, because when they examined hers very casually before moving her in there to rest, a sharp-eyed orderly spotted the white dust she ranted and raved about so much. They realize that it must be Crane's toxin, and they move her out of the room immediately.

In a clean room, she spends her time alone, drugged, relaxed beyond belief. Schwarzwald lets her thoughts flow easily, come and go like the crisp breeze on a November day. She wonders about how the Joker is doing with Dr. Quinzel. She wonders about Crane and his Scarecrow. She wonders if she'll ever be free of this horrible building masquerading as a hospital.

They slowly wean her off of her tranquilizers and the hallucination-controlling medication, seeing as they now know what caused those hallucinations. She doesn't scream at shadows anymore. She becomes relatively calm again, almost cheery at times. She doesn't tell them that the hallucinations aren't gone, but have only lessened enough to become manageable. Shadows still stalk along the walls after her, and for split seconds in time when someone shows up out of nowhere in front of her, she can still think she sees them as a corpse, but it disappears a second after it starts and she grows accustomed to it.

They let her back into the general population once more, and there she meets Crane again.

They still sit beside one another, though for a good long while, Schwarzwald ignores him entirely because she's still angry with him. Crane never tries to start conversation because he knows that even trying would be very useless. Scarecrow tries to get him to talk again, but he won't.

It takes another month for her even to look directly at him. Crane assumes that it's the loneliness getting to her; he suffered a bit of it himself, in the beginning, but nowadays he has Scarecrow to keep him company enough. He may not hold good company, but he holds it. She still isn't allowed to speak with Joker, so she speaks with no one else.

"So, which one are you?" She asks him at dinner one night, out of the blue, and he glances sideways at her.

"Speaking with me again?" His voice is chilled, detached as usual. She rolls her eyes; he can see her do it.

"Crane then. Scarecrow would've laughed in my face at that question, wouldn't he have?"

_**She's right. Snotty bitch.**_

"Any reason why you've chosen this moment to break your vow of silence?" He ignores Scarecrow's growls, looking back to his plate without interest. Tray, actually. She huffs under her breath.

"There's nobody else to talk to. I'm still pissed off at that psychopathic fuck, Featherhead or whatever."

_**Featherhead?! Lemme hit her! Let me knock out her teeth, Crane!**_

"I assume you meant Leatherface, and it's Scarecrow. And good for you, Schwarzwald." He speaks in his easy monotone, ignoring Scarecrow again. He notes that she's poking at her food with the spork, and she's nervous. "Any more hallucinations?" Crane asks her, and he smirks slightly when she whips her head around to glare at him wrathfully.

"No, you prick. They told me what the powder was, and I know I told you enough about it for you to know what it was." Schwarzwald snarls, and Crane continues to smirk at her, in a holier-than-thou manner.

"It was a golden opportunity to see the long-term effects of the toxin; I wouldn't be a scientist if I let it slip through my fingers." He may be smirking at her, gently, but his blue eyes are just as icy as ever and she knows that he's tearing her to pieces with his gaze, staring straight into her to try and figure out what she's thinking and what she might be hiding. She breaks eye contact, lurid green eyes now focusing on the opposite wall.

"Any side-effects still lingering from…our little session?"

"…No."

"You're lying." He deadpans, and she looks up at him, confusion in her eyes.

"How do you know?" Schwarzwald spits, narrowing her eyes.

"I used to be a doctor, you know. I dealt with compulsive liars and psychopaths for a good portion of my career; I can tell when someone is lying to me after all this practice. And you are lying." He explains, and Schwarzwald is surprised to see that there is finally emotion that he's showing her, instead of a glassy, icy exterior. He seems polite enough, when he's not being curt.

"Yeah? Maybe I am. Not that it's any of _your_ business, Scarecrow." She says, and her tone is defensive; she's on the defense and he's gotten the upper hand. Crane pushes.

"Not Scarecrow, not right now. _I_ am Jonathan Crane."

"Does it even matter? You're both in there, and I can't even tell when you're one or the other." Schwarzwald spits, and Crane resists the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he lets Scarecrow slip into the driver's seat to show her the difference between the two of them.

"No, y'see. If you're smart, you can tell," Scarecrow says easily, smiling in a cat-that-ate-the-canary sort of way and leaning in slightly to her, sitting on his left side at the table. She widens her eyes and tries to scoot away, but he very smoothly puts an arm around her shoulders and makes her scoot back.

"You don't need to be that _touchy_. I don't get to have fun like our last session very often, now that the nutty professor is locked up in his own nuthouse." Scarecrow tells her, and the suave smile he's wearing is very out-of-place on Crane's normally austere face.

'_Don't, Scarecrow.'_ Crane's voice sounds in his mind, but he ignores it as Schwarzwald glances up at him, confused.

"What? Crane…you…whatever the hell you are, you worked here?" She stumbles for the appropriate title for the two men in one body, and Scarecrow laughs under his breath, almost inaudibly.

"Worked here? Jonny-boy owned this entire asylum. Not really…but pretty much. He was the director. 'Til Batsy-boo caught him, knocked him down out of his job after the Narrows incident, and then got him tossed in here in a pretty pathetic capture. Scooting drugs laced with fear toxin on the streets, really? Pathetic." He spits the last word, as if saying it has put a bitter taste on his tongue.

'_I said stop it, Scarecrow.'_ Crane says, and his voice is strained and terser than usual. Scarecrow decides to push even harder.

"Poor Jonny. He can't stand it; poor guy just wanted to poison a couple million people with fear gas and watch them squirm, and everyone panics and he loses his job, then gets locked up with the loonies that still hate him. Nothing sadder." A moment after he finishes that little monologue, Scarecrow is wrenched from control and shoved far back into his own mind, as Crane seizes control again.

"Crane?" Schwarzwald recognizes the smile fading into annoyed muteness, as Crane proceeds to ignore her and sulk for the rest of the dinner.

* * *

The next day, she talks with him again. She tells him that she still hallucinates, though they're weak enough in comparison to what she's gone through for her to be able to handle them. He nods, listens to her talk freely, and eventually he listens to her open up about her entire life. It's blackly hilarious, because it's so pathetic and you can even see the strain that the loneliness is taking on her. Like a kicked puppy; he wonders if she does this all the time.

So, in a sick and twisted sort of way, Schwarzwald makes a friend.

She and Crane spend time together. If this 'time' is to be described accurately, then it is mainly time when Schwarzwald talks and talks, with a few prompts from Crane now and then, while Crane and Scarecrow offhandedly plot how they're going to make this woman self-destruct. It's what they do.

Really.

And then, one day, out of the pure blue sky that no one in Arkham can quite remember seeing, they start to let the Joker out into the general community. Why they had decided to do this, no one knows, but Schwarzwald assumes that Dr. Quinzel had something to do with it, probably.

"It's home away from home, isn't it, Schwarzy?" He says, sitting across from her at dinnertime. "Arkham Asylum."

Schwarzwald herself is gaunt, pale, sick-looking; her eyes are large, hazy looking, the body under the cotton uniform lacking in fat much more so than it had been before her little internment here. There are dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and she looks so tired all of the time. It's Arkham at its best, really; House of Bedlam, turning the mad even madder.

He thinks of it as a relaxing sort of place. A vacation from the streets of Gotham was needed every now and then, and what better place to go than a stint in the Elizabeth Arkham Institute for the Criminally Insane?

"I've had horrific hallucinations for almost my entire time here. I see worms that walk, I see cadavers that gibber and laugh and sing with the madmen. I'm sick with some sort of physical illness because I vomit constantly and the orderlies are certain that I'm doing it to myself on purpose. I'm malnutritioned and my only friends are a terrorist that fancies himself a clown and doctor-slash-madman with a split personality that loves to watch me squirm with terror." Schwarzwald says, very calmly, tapping broken and dirty nails on the table. "My cell is cold and dirty, I'm most assuredly going completely mad here, even more so than I was before, and I've got nothing to look forward to but a cold, lonely death in a cell's corner, hallucinating, foaming at the mouth in terror, dying in a puddle of my own vomit and urine. Do you think I'm happy here?"

Joker has to admit, it's one of the most calm, coherent things he's heard out of the mouth of any Arkham guest. Aside from Crane, but Crane never talks to him anyway, just as he's ignoring Joker from his seat beside Schwarzwald. He raises his eyebrows slightly, as Schwarzwald remains cool and calm. That's funny; she seems to be a little Crane clone now. Why could that be?

"Well…to each their own, Schwarzy. I _like_ it here." He tells her, easily, taking a bite from the Arkham paste they call food. She looks back down at her tray, breaking eye contact as she stares at her food again. Crane watches the two of them, and notices the apparent gap in between them.

_**You know what I think? I think she's got some sort of new thing wrong with her.**_

'_Really? I was thinking the same thing. What is your hypothesis?'_

_**I'm thinking that it's some sort of inherit Stockholm syndrome or a variant thereof that causes her to attach herself to a stronger person than herself, one that has exercised control over her at one point in time to prove dominant. She needs someone that beats her, she wants someone that has been known to hurt her to protect her. Daddy issues? Or do you think it's a recessive trauma that she isn't aware of, one resulting from the abuse from that guy that kidnapped her and kept her in his basement when she was a kid?**_

'_Fifteen. And that is a viable notion, though I have another one entirely.'_

_**Really? Shoot, Crane.**_

'_I have the idea that Schwarzwald is suffering from an entirely new condition, one that may or may not have been discovered before; I can't be sure of it. I think that she has no real personality of her own. I think that she recreates her personality, her mannerisms and emotional responses and even unconscious reactions according to who she's around, what environment she happens to be in. In an easier way of explanation, whenever she spends time around a person that she attaches herself to, as you have said, then she crafts a new personality as a defense mechanism, a tactic to keep herself in that person's favor. The same notion would work for environmental responses; she would, in this hypothetical situation, be working to give herself the best chances of survival in this new environment.'_

_**Interesting. Darwin's laws at work within a human being's subconscious? A human mind suffering from extreme trauma and abuse wiping away the personality and instead creating temporary new versions of itself? You know, if you'd have gotten a hold of this broad before we got tossed in here, she could've made you real famous.**_

'_I am aware of this, though I doubt she would have survived very long in our Arkham. She would've gone downstairs rather quickly.'_

_**That's the Jonny-boy I know. Cold, heartless bastard that you are.**_

'_Flattery will get you nowhere.'_

The two halves of Jonathan Crane are no slouches when it comes to their former profession; Crane and Scarecrow can and often do banter back and forth about various patients' psychiatric conditions, mainly out of boredom. They watch Schwarzwald and Joker begin to talk, quietly, and they start up a new conversation. Entirely mental, of course, but still, a conversation.

_**Hey Jonny-Jonny, how about that ten minutes with Schwarzy?**_

'_No.'_


	34. Departures

Sometimes, she wonders: what's next?

They're the three biggest psychos in the ward; those three that you just know about. Well, two; the third is just regular old Schwarzwald, the lackey that hangs around Crane and Joker, the little woman in over her head. Way. Way over her head. She's happy at the bottom, though.

Happy as she can get, anyway. She's sick and skinny and still hallucinating. But then again, who isn't nowadays?

Joker still has that pretty doctor Quinzel that hangs around him, and he gets special treatment because of her. Crane doesn't like it at all, and Schwarzwald doesn't like Quinzel; the good doctor is wont to give 'Schwarzy' dirty looks when she sees her hanging around Joker. She's almost reminding Schwarzwald of who's the bigger dog around when she takes Joker away from her. Crane just doesn't like her because she's condescending.

The days float by like the breeze. Months, maybe? Schwarzwald has no idea how long, because she stops counting. She finds that the room Arkham staff have put her in is the high risk wing, otherwise known as the "Really Fucking Crazy" wing. After she showed such a drastic personality change, from slightly ditzy and loyal to the Joker to detached, calm and snarky once she started hanging around Crane, they don't trust her not to swing around and become psychotic again.

They put her in a room in the same hallway as Crane and Joker. They're being very, very careful with her now.

Joker doesn't like this new Schwarzwald. He's been away too long; let her get cozy with Crane. She's used the crazy doctor as a substitute for him; he's been replaced and she's now imitating Crane the way she once imitated Joker himself.

It bothers him. Not because he wants her, but because he doesn't like other people taking what belongs to _him_.

Crane doesn't like the way she acts around him. Schwarzwald imitates him, whether she consciously realizes she's doing it or not; she's cool, impassionate, no longer her ditzy self. This is displeasing. He almost feels like he has competition for the title of snarky intelligent one in the House of Bedlam that is Arkham Asylum.

Scarecrow just doesn't like her. He says that they should smother her with a pillow when the orderlies aren't looking.

It feels like an eternity passes. Days of getting up, waiting around, eating, talking about the same old things in therapy, going back to sleep. Days are easy. Relaxing, once Schwarzwald comes to lower her standards sufficiently.

And then one day, she hears the door clang open in the middle of what she guesses is the night, while she's sleeping.

"Up and at 'em, Schwarzy." She hears a familiar voice state, and rolls over quickly to see the Joker clad in an Arkham doctor's coat and outfit, flesh-tone concealer makeup smeared across his scars to make them less visible. He's in the doorway, and the towheaded doctor Quinzel waits at the doorway behind him, tapping her foot almost nervously.

"Huh?" Is the most intelligent thing Schwarzwald, sleepy as she is, can come up with. He sighs a bit and walks in, grabbing her by the upper arm, and throwing a doctor's coat into her arms.

"Change into that, and get ready to leave. We're, ah, taking a _leave_ from the dear asylum. Gotham needs its celebrities again; getting too sleepy, too cozy a city." Joker tells her, as Quinzel peeks around the corners. Schwarzwald changes into the coat quickly, and with the shoes that Joker hands her, she looks just like a doctor when she pulls her hair back into a rubber band ponytail. Appears that Joker anticipated everything.

"Clean up nice. Let's go," He says, turning towards the door, and the three walk down the hallway quietly. Schwarzwald's heart is pounding; are they really going to just walk out of Arkham Asylum? It's impossible. They're going to get caught. Schwarzwald looks sideways and then stops, looking back to the Joker and Dr. Quinzel as they continue on, before she walks up to one of the cell doors. Joker notices her absence from his left side, and glances back to her.

"Schwarzy? We're sort of in the middle of an escape?" He reminds her, in a brusque manner, and she looks back to him with plaintive, puppy-dog eyes.

"We can't leave Crane! We _have_ to take him with us." She whines, and the noise grates on his nerves.

"No, no we don't. Doctor Burlap is just dead weight; let's go." He states, smiling through his annoyance, and she shakes her head and looks back inside the small glass window at the single occupant. Harleen is looking at them both by now, before looking ahead, alarmed.

"Doctor Kaseff is coming; act natural." She says, as Joker looks aside and walks ahead with Quinzel, leaving Schwarzwald behind. If she's going to be difficult and put their escape effort into danger of failure, then fuck the bitch. Let her rot in Arkham for being stupid.

Kaseff, a rather coarse, serious doctor with sharp gray eyes and short blond hair walks by them, his doctor's coat billowing with his good clip, the patrol down the high risk hallway, and looks to Quinzel and the new doctor as he walks by. He gives them a curt nod and continues walking, before seeing another new doctor hovering near a cell door. That psychopath, Crane.

"You," He barks at her, and sees her look over at him with alarmed eyes. Oh, exactly what they need; another skittish new doctor for the nuts around here to push around. "What are you doing near his door? He's a dangerous one."

"I was, ah," She starts, before he walks up to her and looks at the tag on her coat. J. Proctor.

"Dr. Proctor, hm? What were you doing?" Kaseff thinks a moment, as the skittish new doctor stands intimidated by his commanding presence, before speaking again. "Ah…wait, it's coming back to me. You must be doing the medication route for this one. It's almost criminal that someone needs to give this one his medication every four hours; takes good time away from us. What pills do they give him this time?"

Schwarzwald, thinking on her feet, pulls out the two white horse pills that they had given her to take earlier. She hid them because they give her a numb, pins-and-needles feeling in her arms and legs, and she does fine without them. Fine enough in her own opinion, anyway. Kaseff nods at seeing them, satisfied, and produces the keyring to the cells.

"You must have been annoyed to find that I had taken these with me; pure habit, you know. Didn't realize you didn't have them until you got here? I used to do it all the time, when I was new kid on the block." He unlocks the cell with the nameplate J. Crane on it, and slides open the door. "Those pills aren't the number they said they were going to give him this week. You'll probably have to go back grab the other two. Take the keys back to the ring, will you?" He puts the keys in her open palm, and she nods, dumbly.

"J. Proctor? Jillian, right?" Kaseff asks, and she nods, still a bit taken aback. "Good; it's been a long time since we've gotten any new doctors willing to work in Arkham's high risk wing, of all places. Gutsy kid, you are." He isn't really all that interested in her anymore and walks past, leaving the inmate alone with the keys to the asylum.

"And how did you manage this? I don't assume it was your charm," Crane says, walking into the open doorway as Schwarzwald stares after Kaseff, dumbly. She looks back at him, and he takes the keys from her hand and snaps his fingers at her. "The coat," He tells her, tersely, and Schwarzwald obeys Crane, pulling off the doctor's coat and handing it to him. Crane puts on the coat, adjusting his glasses, and as soon as the coat lands on his shoulders, his entire posture changes. He stands up straight, becomes very professional, and pulls the rubber band from her hair roughly, taking slight pleasure in seeing her wince at having a few strands of hair pulled out. He roughly takes her hands and pins them behind her back, holding her wrists together tightly, and beginning to walk down the hallway briskly.

Crane leads Schwarzwald like a prisoner, the asylum's keys jingling in the coat pocket, and walks straight out the front doors. The guards don't even recognize that Jonathan Crane is leaving the asylum; they see the white coat and open the door, letting Crane walk out scot-free. Schwarzwald wonders if anybody really gives a fuck at all anymore, but doesn't think on it long as Crane's grip on her wrists remains bruising. When they walk out and down the path for a little, they see Quinzel and Joker ahead of them, and walk.

"Schwarzy, I was sure you'd get caught. How _wonderful_ that you didn't." Joker says, easily, as he sees Crane. "Feel good to be back in the coat, Crow?"

"Immensely." Crane responds coolly, letting go of Schwarzwald's wrists and shoving her towards Joker and Quinzel, and she trips and falls into the mud. He cracks a smirk for a moment at seeing her fall, before pulling the coat off and tossing it aside. Schwarzwald picks herself up, white outfit dirtied, and stares at the three criminals around her. Joker grabs her by the hair and pulls her to her feet, impatiently.

"We don't have time to waste, Schwarzy," He tells her, as Dr. Quinzel removes her doctor's coat and smiles at Joker, adoringly. Schwarzwald knows that she can smell something on Joker right now, and the man smells of sex. She thinks that Quinzel might, too.

"Harley," Joker calls the good doctor the cute name and she brightens, and Schwarzwald instantly knows why he stopped calling her Harley after he escaped from Arkham the first time. He stopped calling _her_ Harley because he had a _new_ Harley. "Let's go."

Schwarzwald notices that Joker has ignored her almost completely in lieu of 'Harley', and Crane just ignores her. She's used to Crane ignoring her, though; being an insufferable asshole is kind of his thing. She used to be the Joker's golden girl, though; she got all the attention, even if she was his punching bag. It's kind of dispiriting to be ignored so completely.

"See you, Doctor Burlap," Joker says to Crane, and the other man narrows his cold blue eyes but says nothing. Schwarzwald expected that they wouldn't all go together; Joker and Scarecrow's modus operandi were completely different, and they would most assuredly kill one another if they tried to stay in close contact.

Joker whistles at Schwarzwald like a dog, snapping his fingers in her face to get her attention. "Schwarzy, come on girl; we need to _go_." He turns and walks towards Gotham City in the background, Harley hanging off of his right arm with her blond head on his shoulder, as Crane turns and walks at an angle away from them, though in the same direction: both of the criminals walk in the same direction though separately, and they both leave Schwarzwald behind.

She has to pick now: will she follow the Joker, like she probably should, or will she stick with Crane, who she's not quite as afraid of as Joker? She then realizes that if she runs away from Joker now, he's going to snap her neck and be done with her. Crane probably doesn't even want her around anyway.

And so she runs after Joker and Harley, walking behind them and giving glances to Crane as he leaves as well, though it's not long before Crane weaves in between the trees and disappears from sight.


	35. Rivals

When they get out of Arkham, the three psychopathic clowns begin to move to regain their holding on Gotham. Joker's men have divvied up the city again, since they were gone for so long, and he wants it back. And now he has not only the slightly crippled and generally useless Schwarzwald to do it; he has the more able and useful Harley Quinn to help him.

They immediately find an abandoned building and set up shop again. More or less, they make the abandoned, derelict and very dangerous building a home. Schwarzwald remains paranoid that the building is going to capsize and take them all to their dark, concrete tombs at the base of the building. Joker and Harley either like the risk or just don't care.

Speaking of Harley Quinn. Schwarzwald is very sure that she now hates her. Schwarzy was born with a jealous mind, though she'll never admit it, and when she's shoved aside to make room for the new girl, it makes her angry. She doesn't want Joker like Harley does, not at all, but that doesn't mean she wants anyone _else_ to have him, either. She doesn't like how Harley hangs off of Joker, she doesn't like all the cute pet names she has for him, and Schwarzwald _**really**_ doesn't like how Harley likes to flaunt him in front of her.

Neither woman really notices that Joker treats both of them the exact same. If Schwarzwald wanted to adore him like Harley does, then he'd let her do the exact same thing; Schwarzy just doesn't feel like that. But Harley does.

Alright, maybe he has Harley help him more. But that's just because Schwarzwald is too busy being jealous and hating Quinn.

Three days after escaping, they get a few thugs back and they get their costumes from the costume maker. Joker is more than happy to be back in his outfit, because an Arkham jumpsuit and a white doctor's coat really isn't an intimidating sight. Schwarzwald is happy to be back in her own monochrome costume, and Harley finally gets hers. It's a tight latex sort of thing, Schwarzwald thinks, and she also notices that the former doctor is curvier than her. Or maybe it's her envious mind that makes her think Harley's prettier than her; it's hard to tell anymore.

After some chatting between the three of them, Schwarzwald finds out that Harley's younger than her, too. Another stupid thing that she can add to the reasons she has to hate Harley Quinn. Schwarzwald is very aware that she's being a jealous bitch, but so is Harley, though to a much lesser extent, so it's alright.

They move from their derelict building back to the chemical factory that remains abandoned and waiting for them. There's still an uproar about how the Joker has broken out of a high-security mental facility, twice. There's more panic when they find out that Jonathan Crane has escaped as well.

Things move along smoothly for a while. Joker starts to get ready to rain terror and hell upon the Gotham people again, while Harley and Schwarzwald help him while hating one another.

Their first order of business: they hit a bank to get some start-up money.

Joker walks in, smoothly, beginning an introduction to the terrified bank-goers. As he does, Schwarzwald, as planned, hurries back towards the vault with a couple thugs. They begin to crack the vault, Schwarzwald peeking out now and then to see Harley kill a teller with a cell phone and then continue to strut around at Joker's side, generally looking pretty and dangerous.

"We're done here." One thug says, as the other opens the vault. They can't afford to kill off all their thugs now, because they don't have that many yet, and so all three begin to load money into dufflebags, like Joker told them to. Schwarzwald is a little slow at it, but there's no problem here.

"Hey!" Harley is in the doorway, looking at the three of them loading up money, and she looks annoyed. Schwarzwald looks up at her, equally annoyed.

"What? We're sort of busy here?" She snaps back, and Harley struts up towards her and begins piling money into the same dufflebag.

"What's taking so long? You can't be this useless." Harley snaps, and the thugs watch the two women glare and try to load money in quicker than the other.

"I can do it myself, so go do your fucking job." Schwarzwald snaps back, and the two continue to try one-upping one another.

After fifteen minutes of this, and some arguing, Joker walks into the doorway looking annoyed. "We need to, ah, take our leave."

Both women look at one another, and then back to him. "Why?" They ask, as police sirens wail in the background, growing steadily louder.

"Because someone didn't watch for people calling Gordon's dogs on their cell phones." He says, bluntly, before the three begin to move, the thugs following them.

One shootout later, which involves using the two thugs as human shields, and throwing the bullet-ridden corpses at the cops, though the second is launched at Batman right after he lands from the roof of a nearby building and prepares to attack, and the third is dragged down the alleyway, sobbing, pleading for his life, before the Joker lights him on fire and sends him running, screaming, down the alleyway at Batman and the cops, who are giving chase, and the three escape into the night and make their way back to the chemical factory.

Schwarzwald is very, very pale after she sees the man go up in flames and screech bloody murder, before being accidentally shot full of holes by the cops and then trampled and tripped over by Batman sprinting to give chase, and when they get into the getaway van hidden a block away, the first thing she does when she sits down in back with Harley and Joker is vomit on her shoes.

She can have other people kill people. Hell, she can push the detonator and kill scores of human beings with no ill feeling. But she absolutely can't kill someone face-to-face, and seeing other people do it makes her feel sick. Not to mention this is the first time she's seen Joker do something completely and unnecessarily cruel just for the sake of cruelty, such as seeing a man run screaming down an alleyway like a human torch before the Batman trips over him like some sort of sick slapstick routine. Not to forget that the Joker just happened to quip "Let's brighten up Batsy's day" before laughing like a maniac and sending the poor bastard off on his flaming suicide run, Harley joining him in his laughter.

Sometimes, Schwarzwald really does wonder why she picked this line of work. Then she remembers that she had no choice and needs to quit bitching about it.

A couple days after the failed bank robbery, which they only got a fraction of the money they should have out of it, Joker tells both Harley and Schwarzwald that they're going to plant C4 in the tailpipes of various people's cars. The two of them split up and do half of the list, until they hit the last two cars and meet up.

"I'm taking these two; you go back and wait for me." Schwarzwald snaps, kneeling in front of the car, as Harley glares back.

"No, I'll do it, and _you_ go back." Harley snaps back, preparing to load the C4 herself. The two of them sit there and stare each other down, before beginning to argue.

"You can't handle it; don't wanna ruin your boots again, do ya?" Quinn sneers, and Schwarzwald grinds her teeth.

"Bombs are fine; don't want you to screw up and blow yourself up, toots. That's all." She sneers back, continuing to glare. It's now that they hear a merry little jingle, and realize that it's the one-minute timer telling them that the bombs are going off in exactly one minute. They're holding two packs of C4; one each. Once they stare at one another for a second, they toss the C4 and run, both happening to take the time to try and run faster than the other. The bomb's explosion knocks them off their feet for a moment, before they scramble up again and take off running.

When they make it back to the base, Joker is less than pleased.

"You two are pretty _useless_, aren't you?" He growls, laying a hard kick to Schwarzwald's ribs as she tries pitifully to crawl away across the concrete floor. The Joker is a boss that you do _not_ want to disappoint. When he kicks her she yelps like a kicked dog, and when Harley comes up on his left, from her spot sitting on the floor with a hand over her split lip, and tries to plead with him, he backhands her as hard as he can. She hits the floor again, falling against a table for support, as Joker continues on his little rant.

"A simple, simple job. Shove C4 into ten cars' tailpipes, and leave. You had an _hour_ to do it all, and you still managed to _screw it up_." His voice is a tone higher than usual, seething anger right behind the surface, and when he sees that Schwarzwald is trying to crawl away, pitifully, sobbing, he stamps on her back to get her to quit moving and then punts her to get her to stop sobbing; the noise is grating on his already frayed nerves.

"Shut. Up." He breathes, and she does instantly. He's told them already that the last car, the one that wasn't destroyed, was the one that he actually needed destroyed and the others were only destroyed to hide his actual target. After a moment, seeing the both of them at his feet without any fight in them left, he growls under his breath and speaks again, in a tone that seems to be imitating kindness.

"_**Don't**_ screw up the _next_ one." He warns, and doesn't even need to add a threat for them to know he's absolutely serious. He leaves, and Schwarzwald and Harley make eye contact and glare.

"It's _your_ fault." They both accuse, simultaneously, before rolling over and moving to get away from one another.

* * *

The next job is a week later. They're going to grab a hostage, strap a bomb to them, set them in the center of a very large intersection with four important buildings on either direction of them; a daycare, a school, and a set of pleasant homes. The hostage is going to be the sister of a mob man, and Joker says that she should be easy enough to get there. Someone else, meanwhile, is going to be helping set up charges on the other side of Gotham, unnoticed by the general populace as they panic about the hostage, and they will end up setting their charge within a hospital, by helping deliver a bomb-rigged vending machine into the best place in the building to cause the most damage. Joker, meanwhile, will be drawing all the attention not drawn to the hostage to himself, making sure to get a hold of a news reporting team so that he can contact the entire news-watching city.

It's a plan that's going to be the big introduction to Gotham that their Public Enemy Number One is back in action…again.

The hostage is already picked out, and Schwarzwald is chosen to go get her, and bring her to the right location, where thugs will be waiting to strap the bomb to her and then move her to the intersection. Harley is going to help move the bomb-rigged vending machine into the hospital and then she's going to join Schwarzwald in keeping attention to themselves as well, though mainly in keeping the bomb squad away from the hostage and hospital, which aren't that far apart, before they're notified that it's time to blow the scene and watch the fireworks. Joker is going to wait with his hostage news team in a derelict building in the Narrows, narrating to the city to keep their attentions and offer his ultimatum: they go and rescue the single hostage, or they go and save the hospital. Joker himself is going to see if Batman is going to come find him instead of helping the police take care of and rescue the hostages, which he could ostensibly do. One life, two hundred lives, or sacrifice them all to apprehend a man that will most likely just escape again?

The plan goes into action the next day. Joker, Harley, and Schwarzwald go their separate ways, each accompanied by an entourage of thugs that are either masked or unmasked, depending on what their leader's objective is. Schwarzwald finds the apartment of the woman she's kidnapping, and the dingy little building looks all-too-familiar. She doesn't know why, until she walks in the building, knocking out the caretaker of the woman, and walks in the bedroom to see none other than Samantha Keegan. Her heart drops into her stomach.

"Hello?" Samantha asks, alarmed. "Who's there?"

Schwarzwald doesn't answer, only watches the thugs march in and grab her, dragging her along screaming. They march out, toss her in the car, and take her to an empty parking lot and strap the bomb to her frail chest. One of the thugs cops a feel and Schwarzwald bludgeons him with the butt of her shotgun, angrily. He calls her a bitch under his breath and continues, as Samantha cries out for help, and manages to slash at what could possibly be left of Schwarzwald's heart with words sharp as razors.

They drive the now bomb-strapped Samantha, also now gagged because everyone is sick of hearing her scream, to the intersection and place her there, Schwarzwald feeling very sick as she stands before the ungagged and screaming Samantha in the intersection, with all six other thugs, toting her shotgun. Cops surround her quickly, but keep their distance with the heavy arms that the Joker goons are carrying. Cameras surround them quickly, SWAT cars and members, all staring and watching and horribly oppressive. The guilt is not mixing well with her general feeling of claustrophobia by all the people focusing on her.

Samantha continues to scream and beg for help, pleading for them to let her go. Schwarzwald almost wants to kill her just to shut her up; she's that desperate to escape the guilt.

She doesn't hear the Joker's speech, but she knows it's begun when everyone seems to turn away and begin listening to something she can't quite catch. Commotion sounds as people rush towards the hospital, where Harley and her thugs are probably waiting to defend it.

The minutes tick down. Samantha keeps screaming, pitifully now, and then the small jolly circus jingle sounds that lets the thugs know when to run. One minute until the bomb goes off. Thugs start firing off into the crowd, causing confusion and panic, and run off into that same crowd while throwing aside their guns and masks and overcoats, trying their best to blend in. Schwarzwald prepares to make her own path, or at least attempt it, when Samantha screams one last thing that freezes her blood.

"Michael!"

Schwarzwald freezes at the shrieked name, as Samantha sobs his name again and again, and suddenly, Schwarzy finds herself whirling around and dropping beside Samantha, tugging at wires like a madwoman. Joker showed her which wires arm and which can be pulled to disarm, and she's trying to do that just now. People have assumed the bomb is about to go off and run, clearing the area, as Schwarzwald continues to pull the wires. The seconds tick down; she hasn't got much time.

"Hold on!" Schwarzwald shrieks hoarsely, pulling the bomb off and dropping it before dragging Samantha against her, turning and diving towards a dumpster nearby. The bomb blows at their back, Schwarzwald feeling a searing breeze across her back as she dives against the concrete with partial cover from a dumpster with Samantha pinned under her, protected from the heat.

Schwarzwald's ears ring painfully, and all noise sounds like it's coming through a layer of cotton. She can only hear her own rapid pulse and her ragged, pained breathing. She can't kill her human emotions; can't be rid of her human guilt. Samantha sobs below her, quietly, and for a split second, Schwarzwald can become Michelle again. She brushes the younger woman's hair out of her face, tenderly, with shaking fingers, and speaks quietly into her ear.

"I'm so sorry."

Samantha's blind, milky eyes open and then turn to focus, in their own way, on Schwarzwald's face.

"Julia?" She asks, softly, but gets no answer as Schwarzwald stands up and staggers towards the nearby alley, not hearing the hospital bomb. They must have deactivated it in time. Probably due to them seeing Schwarzwald deactivating Samantha's bomb and gambling on her knowing what she was doing.

Joker is going to kill her. Agonizingly.

Schwarzwald turns back to Samantha in time to see Batman there, not too far away, apparently having come to attempt to save Samantha. He wouldn't have made it if Schwarzwald hadn't proved a heroic idiot. Schwarzwald stares at him a moment, and he seems to stare right through her before turning to Samantha instead, leaning down to see if she's alright while the police reorganize themselves. Schwarzwald comprehends that he's letting her off right now and so she turns and runs, runs as fast as she can while wearing heels, and hijacks a car to ride back to the chemical factory base, fully aware that Joker's going to mutilate her when she gets back.

She feels sick. So sick. Maybe when you're an evil, murdering whore, compassion makes you ill?


	36. Catfights

When Schwarzwald makes her way back into the chemical factory, she realizes that Joker isn't back yet.

But Harley Quinn is.

Quinn is standing outside the front door, looking slightly singed, and when she lays eyes on Schwarzwald, they narrow dangerously. She marches towards Schwarzy, her posture radiating nothing but pure wrath.

"What the hell, Schwarzwald?" She growls, as she stands in front of Schwarzwald, grabbing her by the front of her dirty white and black costume and dragging her face-to-face. "You screwed up the whole plan!"

Schwarzwald shoves her back a step, not wanting to deal with it. Harley grabs her and pulls her back, throwing her back a couple steps so that they can stare one another off. It's time for this rancor-filled relationship to come to a head, right here in the mud outside of their base on this dark, rainy night.

"What's the matter, Harley? Haven't had your fix of pitiful attempts at humping Joker yet?"

No one said it was going to be a _tasteful_ fight.

"No," Harley spits, her pretty face twisting into a snarl of a forced smile, "Haven't had your fix of candy bars, you cow?" She shoots back, and the two of them don't realize that they're circling one another like wolves. Schwarzwald's eyes widen for a moment, before narrowing. She's been on a diet lately so that she can slim down to be as skinny as Harley, and they both know it.

"Not lately. Poor, rotten little slut; can't get him to want you yet?" Schwarzwald fires back, and though she's used that insult before, it still stings like lemon juice and salt in a very open wound. Harley growls in her throat, deep.

"Better than if _you_ were trying." Harley growls, and Schwarzwald's nails, now painted black and white again, dig into her palm tight enough to draw blood, thunder booming off in the distance to make a very dangerous ambiance.

"Hah. I don't need to, because I already _have_." Schwarzwald sneers, and she instantly knows that she's hit the switch. They're not fighting over a failed job anymore; this is something much more important that they might kill one another over.

"You're lying."

"Complete truth. Maybe he just doesn't think you're worth anything more than _foreplay_."

That's about when Harley lunges forward, crossing the gap between them in the muddy ground outside the factory and tackles Schwarzwald, and they both hit the dirt. Harley's straddling Schwarzwald's stomach, and she tries to hook her thumbs into Schwarzwald's eyes and gouge them out. Schwarzwald bucks her weight and throws Harley off, upwards and over her head, and Quinn rolls onto her hands and knees right as Schwarzwald jumps up, whirls around, and tries to punch her in the face. She grabs her fist and slams her knee into Schwarzwald's stomach, and Schwarzwald leans her head up and headbutts Harley as hard as she possibly can, and this sends them both reeling. Harley recovers first and grabs a handful of black and white spray-painted hair, pulling hard and twisting her hand so that Schwarzwald screeches in pain. Since Quinn is kneeling and Schwarzwald is on her back on the concrete floor in front of her, her head practically lying in her lap, Harley looks up in time to see Schwarzwald swing her foot and kick her in the face. Harley lets go of her and falls in a sitting position in the mud, with a hand over her face, as Schwarzwald twists around to face her and continue the assault.

"Surprise!" Harley chimes, sneering with terrible joy, as she throws dirt into Schwarzwald's face and eyes. Schwarzwald screams, hands over her face, and after a moment where she rubs her eyes hard to try and clear her vision, looks up at Harley just in time to see her swinging some rebar that's been laying in a pile near the front door of the factory. A split second later it connects and sends Schwarzwald sprawling. She can't really see all too well, from how her vision is fuzzy and blurred and her thoughts are incomprehensible, but she's coherent enough to see Harley Quinn standing up, smiling viciously, and walking over towards her, rebar in hand. The rain is falling hard now, drenching them and plastering their hair against their bodies, makeup running and dripping from their chins like tears. The mud is thick now and it makes walking in heels very difficult, but Harley manages it through sheer willpower.

"Puddin' won't miss you; you're nothin' but dead weight." She tells the incapacitated Schwarzwald, patting the rebar into her palm as she walks over to stand in front of Schwarzwald, her figure framed by lightning that flashes through the dark clouds overhead, and raises the rebar high over her head. "Say goodnight!"

She swings, the blow connects, swings, hits, swings, hits. With every blow, Schwarzwald lets out a pathetic pained screech, before Harley gets too careless and bloodthirsty, tossing the rebar aside so that she can stomp on the bloodied rival. When she does, and fuck do her heels hurt, Schwarzwald grabs her ankle and jerks, just like she did to that masked thug all those nights ago on the eve of the Wayne fundraiser that started this whole mess, and Harley goes down. Schwarzwald is on her in an instant, her vision blurred and her head aching and her body beaten, and she waylays Quinn with every blow that will connect. She thinks that some of them do, though she can't be sure, until Harley bucks her weight and throws her off, sending her toppling. Harley grabs the rebar again and crawls over to the incapacitated Schwarzwald, straddling her hips, and raises the rebar high overhead. She aims to beat Schwarzwald's face, make it collapse in on itself, never have to look at it again.

Schwarzwald opens one eye, glaring, and mutters, "Surprise." Harley looks up in time to see that Schwarzwald has pulled off one shoe and swung it like a bat, and it connects with the younger woman's left cheek. It knocks her off her game enough so that Schwarzwald can try to pry the rebar out of her hands, which they battle over as muddy, soaking wet women trying to earnestly kill one another.

"Bitch!" Harley roars, pulling and twisting hair, jerking the older woman about as hard as she can as they battle for the rebar.

"Whore!" Schwarzwald screeches, trying to slap the woman under her. She succeeds, once, twice, before she gets a hold on the rebar, hair plastered to her face and neck and shoulders, raising it high above her head, aiming to stake Harley Quinn through the heart with it. She shoves it downwards, towards Harley's body, her throat, but Harley's thinner and more athletic, twists in a way that makes her miss and then throws Schwarzwald off again, and the two are grabbing hair and screaming and biting and pulling and clawing and rolling over and over again through the mud, as thugs watch from the factory doorway as the two women wearing latex, soaking wet, very cold, are basically mud wrestling to the death in front of them. It doesn't hurt that whenever they try to gain dominance, they straddle each other's hips and half the time it looks like they're having rough sex. The men can't say they don't like what they're watching.

"You usually gotta pay 12.99 to see this sort of shit." Rocko states, watching Harley and Schwarzy try to kill one another. Charlie, and Eddie nod, slowly, continuing to watch the women fight. They fight _dirty_.

"Slut!"

"Orphan!"

"Jailbait!"

"Fatass!"

They roar insults, their voices hoarse and cracking, until Harley, under Schwarzwald, who is currently trying to beat her into submission, lands a very hard punch right to Schwarzwald's throat. Schwarzwald gags, chokes, and Harley throws her off into the mud that's now liquid enough to puddle. She grabs Schwarzwald with haste, rolls her onto her stomach, and forces her head down into one of these mud puddles, intent on drowning her. Schwarzwald flails, kicks, tries to throw Quinn off, but Harley is sitting on her back and keeping her hand on the back of her head so that she can't jerk away and get a breath. After a minute, Schwarzwald opens her mouth and instantly tastes grass and mud, sucks it in instinctively, and feels the horrible burning sensation in her lungs. The only sound she can hear is her own attempt at screaming, which is pitiful and muffled by the mud. Is this how she's really going to die, finally? Drowned in the rain by Harley Quinn? Apparently so. _At least_, she thinks, _I died with one good deed under my belt._

Harley's weight is wrenched off of her suddenly and someone grasps her by the hair, pulling her face out of the mud. She chokes and coughs up mud and dirt and grass, as her hearing clears somewhat, and when her eyes begin to clear too, she sees a hastily painted smile running down his chin.

"Couldn't wait for me?" Joker asks, pleasant in tone, as Schwarzwald droops and vomits mud that she's swallowed. He throws her down, as she wheezes and coughs and sucks in breath, and looks between Harley Quinn, who he's wrenched off and thrown away a few feet, and Schwarzwald recovering at his feet.

"I never want to miss a good cat fight. Especially over _me_," Joker looks between them, and there's wrath in his dark eyes as the kohl runs down his cheeks like tears and makes him look even more like a horror than usual. Harley scoots backwards, hesitantly, her makeup running as well.

"M…Mister J…what're you…?" She asks, nervously, very quietly, eyes wide. Joker strides over to her, smiling, and kicks her in the ribs. She yelps and hits the ground, as he stomps on her shoulder as hard as he can.

"I'm…punishing…_failures_." He seethes, punctuating every word with a stomp, before Harley moves to her knees and grasps at his leg, wide eyes full of fear and sorrow.

"I'm sorry!! I-I won't!" She begins, but he swings and catches her in the eye with the side of his fist. She lets go, slumps off of him, and goes silent. Schwarzwald knows that she's next, and she turns and tries to crawl away again, pitifully slow and hacking bloody mud, before a boot presses down on the back of her head and smashes her face against the ground, submerging the right side of her face in mud again.

"Oh no, you're not getting away either, Schwarzy." Joker chides, pressing harder and watching her squirm. "I know what you did; trying to be a hero? No heroes in Gotham last very long, you know. Look at Harvey Dent; look what happened to him. Batman is a pariah in the city he fights, uselessly, to save. The police are worthless when it comes to people like you, and Harl, and me." He removes his foot from her head and she raises it out of the mud, and rolls over to try and protect herself from any assault coming. He stamps down on her stomach, hard, and she lets out a little yelp when she does.

"There…are…no…more…heroes…" Joker growls, once again stomping on Schwarzwald relentlessly, knowing that he's leaving horrid bruises and maybe internal injuries, "They're…all…_dead_." When she looks up at him, with childlike eyes full of betrayal and hurt and a message that reads _why are you hurting me, you're supposed to protect me, I love you_, he kicks her in the face. Nothing makes him sicker than that look. Her eyes go closed as she wishes that he'd just kill her already, stop hurting her and making her feel pain, and she feels him take her chin up so that she faces him, holding her chin and rubbing his thumb along her cheek and jaw line, almost lovingly, before she feels white-hot agony as he shoves the blade in her mouth and saws. She's failed him, _betrayed_ him, for the last time, apparently, and he's going to make her pay for it for the rest of her life. Schwarzwald screams, she screams blue murder as he mutilates her, until blood chokes her and her stomach turns and twists. She dry heaves, because the taste of blood makes her so sick, but there's nothing to vomit and she's too busy choking and heaving and gurgling like an infant, blood bubbling, frothing pink, to do anything but wait for him to finish.

She automatically knows that he's decided to put a smile on her face. Permanently.

When he finishes he drops her, as she wails and sobs in pain with her hands over her ruined face, and she knows that she'll never be pretty again, vain creature that she is, and after a minute, someone else is dragging her into the building. They drag her inside, to her old room again, and they toss her sobbing, dripping, bleeding form in on the dirty concrete. The two unfamiliar people walk out the doorway as she curls up on the floor with her hands over her ruined face and opens one blurry eye, seeing a mass of purple towering over her.

"Here," Joker says, indifferently, and he tosses a mirror down beside her, followed by a roll of thread and a sewing needle. "You'll need them. And doll_face_, don't you forget to _smile_."

The door slams a moment later and, after what may be five minutes or five hours, she picks up the mirror and needle and thread, crawls to her dirty mattress and into the very furthest corner of the room, her frame still wracked with sobs, and she begins to sew.


	37. Aftermaths

Three whole days and she hasn't left her room, not even once.

All right, he probably went just a _tiny_ bit overboard, but with his newest idea coming out a failure, all thanks to Schwarzy there, you can't really blame him. Not really. She's been screwing up since day one and it finally came back to bite her. Hard.

Some people say that they hear her crying inside her room, which Joker kind of expects, really. He remembers, in one way or another, when he got his, and they _hurt_. Or maybe she's crying because he's ruined her pretty face? Schwarzwald was kind of a vain little thing, so she might be taking it very, very hard.

Not that he really _cares_. It's just something to consider.

Harley's been walking on eggshells ever since the night in the rain. It's kind of annoying, actually; he's been in a relatively good mood for most of these three days, and nobody wants to talk with him anymore. Not many people did in the first place, but he's gotten used to dealing with the attention of having two jealous women fighting over him and now that it's gone, it's kind of odd.

The fourth day passes and he decides to go look at Schwarzwald himself. It can't be _so_ bad that she'd rather starve to death in that little room, can it?

When he opens the door and gets a quick look at her shocked expression before she turns her head and hides her face in her hands, it apparently _is_ that bad. Her hair is blond in spots, blackish grey in others, horribly ratted and tangled, her makeup is gone in most places and only there in small white spots on her forehead, her costume is filthy. But it's her face that he wants to see again.

"Let me see." He says, walking over to her in her corner, as she keeps her hands, her filthy, bloody gloves, over her face, shaking her head rapidly. He grabs her wrists and pries them away, as she turns her head away as far as she can, and the side he can see is hidden behind a veil of ratted hair.

"No! Get away from me!" Schwarzwald screams, her voice hoarse and desperate and so damn pitiful, full of terror. Joker tsks, before trapping both her wrists in one hand and using his free hand to forcefully grasp her chin and force her face back towards him. He admires his work, as she tries to kick at him, fight, and he ignores her feeble attempts to get away.

Her false smile is lovely. It's also sort of jagged, since when he did it to her he was enraged, it was dark, it was raining, and she was covered in mud and thrashing, but that's okay; his are too. He can't tell, though, if he's relieved or unhappy that he's not the only one with the smile that is not happy in Gotham anymore. Instead of either choice, he decides that he's satisfied with Schwarzwald's scars, and knows that she's never going to go against him ever again. He didn't really have a choice in what he took from her, anyway, so she shouldn't be so angry with him.

She really didn't have anything left but her beauty. So he took it away.

"They're not half bad," Joker says, running his thumb very gingerly over the gash twisting up from the left side of her mouth. He can see the very hasty sewing job and knows that when they actually scar over, they're going to be absolutely horrible. "I think I did well, considering the environs we were in."

Schwarzwald, as soon as he touches her face, jerks away suddenly and tears out of his grip, hands over her face.

"I'm ugly!!" She wails, in complete and total despair. "You made me _ugly_!!" She screams the words, muffled though they are by her hands, as she sits with her back towards him, sobbing. Joker tsks again, rolling his eyes a bit at her theatrics, before grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to turn back around. She resists, until he gives a harder jerk to tell her that he's not playing around, and she turns, though keeping her hands over her face.

"If I wanted to make you _ugly_, I could have cut out an eye, or sliced out your tongue, or knocked out your teeth," He informs her, quite pleasantly for the situation they're in, and sees the glint of green from in between her fingers as she watches him for movement. "I didn't want to make you ugly. I just wanted to give you the message, loud and clear."

Schwarzwald keeps her hands covering her mouth, but parts her fingers slightly to show that she's interested. "Message?"

"Times are gone, Schwarzy, for the good little children." Joker states, still crouching down right in front of her. "What happens to the good ones? They get kidnapped. They get held hostage. They get beaten, they get mugged, they get raped, they get knifed and left to bleed out in cold alleyways. It'd do you a world of good, it really would, to stop pretending you're one of the 'good guys', because you're not. You know it, I know it, Gotham knows it."

"What did you get for helping the poor girl strapped to the bomb? You got your pretty face fixed, and no big 'thank you' from the city. They still think you're a _freak_. And now, they've got another reason to. I told you before, Schwarzy; they're ruthless dogs, and they don't _want_ you. They _want_ to have a villain." He pries her hands off of her face again, so that he can see that she's got cottonballs in her mouth, probably from under the sink. They're soaked with blood, of course, and he notices the bottles of peroxide laying near the bed. She's been trying to _fix_ it, adorable, pitiful little thing.

"They _want_ to hate you. You'd better learn that quick." Joker smiles again, and Schwarzwald feels inwardly sick when she knows that if she survives long enough for them to scar, she's going to have a smile like that someday. He lets go of her, and she pulls herself into a sort of ball and watches him turn and leave, leaving the door cracked.

"Don't stay in here the rest of the day, or I'll have somebody _help_ you out." He says, before she hears his footsteps fade away down the hall, and wraps her arms around her legs as she pulls them against her chest, hiding her head. Schwarzwald doesn't believe when he says that she's not ugly. She's hideous. _Disgusting_. No one will _ever_ want her now. She had only her beauty to pride herself in, and now that's gone too; there's literally nothing left that anyone can take from her that doesn't involve mangling her. It's not like there's anything left of her sanity but confetti, anyway.

It's now that she wonders what would've happened if she had followed Crane instead. There's no telling what might've happened to her there; she knows that Crane is probably a sadistic bastard on his own terms, but then again, so is the Joker. She wonders if Crane would have hurt her too, and then decides that he probably wouldn't have done anything to her physically. Probably would've absolutely _**destroyed**_ her mentally, but that's different, and by now she doesn't even care.

She makes her way back to the bathroom, pushing aside the bloody needle and thread that have been there for a few days, and looks in the big mirror at herself for the first time. The small mirror that Joker gave her lies on the floor near the opposite wall in the main room, shattered, where she threw it in rage and disgust at seeing herself.

Schwarzwald looks in the mirror at her full profile, and it makes her want to cry again, makes her want to learn how to tie a noose with a bed sheet. Her hair is tangled and oily and disgusting, her makeup is blotched, her eyes are red and bloodshot from all the crying, and the gashes on the sides of her mouth are bright red, irritated, twisted. They're horrible and disgusting and they ruin her pretty face. They're horrible things that will never, ever go away. She doesn't ever have a chance at a normal life now, and nobody will ever, ever want her because she's so _ugly_.

Schwarzwald lets out a loud, strangled scream, and then drops her head to the sink, sobbing.

* * *

Joker raises his eyebrows as Schwarzwald stands in the open doorway, arms crossed over her chest, watching him sit in his chair with one leg crossed over the other, using it as a sort of support on which to hold a knife he's been sharpening out of boredom.

"Leaving?" He asks, and she gives a curt nod, as he notices that she's wearing normal clothing; that disgusting black jacket that's been laying in the room for months, now soiled with only god knows what. She's got on her black sweater under it, and wearing those dirty brownish slacks; she's trying, so hard, to dress and look normal, though her cheeks are enough to prove that she's not. He knows what she's trying. She's threatening to leave because she wants him to say, 'No, don't leave, I need you here, I can't _stand_ to have you go'. If she didn't care what he thought, then she wouldn't come tell him in person that she was going.

Unfortunately enough for Schwarzy here, he doesn't play those games. The only games he plays are his own.

"Fine," He says, returning to staring at his reflection in the knife blade, but he can see her expression tighten and her shoulders droop in unhappiness, and it makes him want to smile. "Go then."

It's not that he doesn't want her around. It's just that he's not going to beg for her to stay. And where else will she go? Gotham? They'll laugh her out of town, they'll mock her for her new face and they both know it. He's not her father; she wants him to care, and he's just not capable to play babysitter to the girl with daddy issues. For Christ's sake, she's thirty five, and still acts like a teenager sometimes. He knows she wants him to be nicer to her, to act like they're friends, maybe even family, but that's not his job. She's his worker and he's her boss, and that's all the relationship they have. Schwarzy dear just can't get that through her skull.

"I will." She says, and her voice quakes as she tries to sound strong.

"I'm not stopping you." He states back, in dread monotone, and she turns, hesitantly. He ignores her as she turns her back and then looks over her shoulder at him, hopefully almost as he looks up at her again.

"You'll have to walk. We're keeping the cars."

Once he says that, and her heart breaks, he returns to his knife and pretends she doesn't exist, and he knows it hurts her so badly. It does. Schwarzwald wants to cry again right when she sees how superfluous he finds her. He just thinks of her as a tool, as a grunt, and that's really all she is. But she thinks of him as something much more nowadays; that disorder, that mental disease where she makes attachments that to her are so strong that they might as well be family, and are to them as dirt. Schwarzwald, stupid girl that she is, considered the Joker a mentor, a friend, maybe even a sort of father figure. And so when he betrays her trust, her adoration, like this, it destroys her from the inside. When he carved her face, it made her fear him again, like she should have the entire time. And when he lets her just walk out like this, without a single care, she realizes that what _she_ felt never meant anything at all.

It's so stupid, now that she really thinks about it. Why was she so stupid?

_You don't need him_, she thinks she hears something whisper in her mind, low and angry and dark, but it's gone the moment she hears it and she fancies it a fluttering thought that she had no control over.

"Fine." Schwarzwald says, her voice gruff to try and hide the hurt in it, the softly quaking tone, as she walks out the door, her hair a freshly washed blond and her face clean of makeup. The walk to Gotham is going to be long and hard, but she'll make it, because there's nowhere else to go.

The Joker thinks that Schwarzwald's got nowhere to go, but he's wrong. She's going to go hunt down a mad scientist that fancies himself a doctor.


	38. Hirings

It takes her four hours to jog to the outskirts of Gotham City. It takes another two to walk into the busy part of the city itself, and it takes her all of five seconds to make sure the scarf wrapped around her neck and mouth is secure so that she won't get stares.

Schwarzwald, now taking up the name Julia Kingsley, for this moment in time anyway, and going off about the city. She's incapable of doing anything that requires identification anyway, so it shouldn't matter if she takes up a random name.

Right now, she's on a mission: Find Jonathan Crane, codenamed for the hell of it as Operation: Fuck The World.

Operation: Fuck The World begins well enough. A hobo harasses Julia as she walks down the street, panhandling at her as she, very quaintly, ignores him. He calls her a bitch and then walks off.

So far, so well.

Julia then spends her time sleeping on a park bench, as she's very tired. She sleeps until noon, which is when the park fills up with children and parents and the noise wakes her up. She then just sits there, wishing she had her cane again because her leg is beginning to ache with all the exertion and it's making walking difficult, and watches the families frolic. She's envious, and has no idea why. Michelle King never wanted to have a family to tie her down. Why should Julia? Why should Schwarzwald?

A child runs up to her, and stares. It's a little boy, and he can't be more than five. He's just staring at the odd woman with the scarf around her mouth, the little blond boy with the brown eyes and the cute face, and then, he speaks in a child's shrill tone.

"Why do you got that scarf?" He queries, and Julia smiles behind the scarf, and the boy can see the smile in her eyes.

"Because my face is hurt." Julia speaks, softly, and he cocks his head.

"Why?" He asks, and Julia is about to answer, when she stops and strains to listen to something.

_Because you're ugly, you fucking pathetic little whore. _The dark whispering continues, as Julia begins to tear up. The voice is slick, calm, dangerous.

"I'm not." Julia says, very quietly, to the voice, and thinks she hears laughter.

_You are._

"Huh?" The boy asks, and Julia closes her eyes. She feels something tugging at the back of her consciousness, urgently, and resists it, viciously. Whatever it was, it retracts and goes silent again, as Julia smiles at the little boy while pulling down her scarf.

"_Am I **still** pretty_?" She asks, and there's a crazed note in her voice and an odd glimmer to her eyes; desperate, depressed, needy. The boy pales as he sees her scars, and he runs away screaming about a monster to leave Julia sitting there alone, crestfallen. Nothing crueler than a child.

People begin to look and Julia pulls her scarf up around her mouth again, beginning to walk. She doesn't even know where she's walking, just that she needs to walk. She continues to walk until she walks straight into the Narrows, watching nothing but her feet and the concrete under them. She bumps into someone, and watches them scatter materials across the concrete.

"Here…let me help you with those." Julia says, though it's more of a sigh than anything, and leans down to help pick up what the other person is hastily trying to grab up and out of her sight. She sees that this person's supplies have spilled out of a plastic bag, and it's…white…powdery…dust.

Before the man can run, as he's trying to do, she grabs him and shoves him into an alleyway, glaring. "Where is he?" She snaps, eyes narrowing, and sees the random man that she's grabbed. He tries to shove her off and away, but she steels herself and he's unable to get rid of her as she drags him back; he's not a big guy, pretty skinny, probably a junkie. "Answer me!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" The man snaps, shoving her, but she doesn't budge more than a step. Julia uses a free hand to jerk down the scarf, and show him the terrible slices on her mouth. She grabs a broken bottle from the trashcan they're next to, breaks it on the wall, and holds the jagged edge in his face.

"You tell me where Scarecrow is, or I'll do to _you_ what Joker did to _me_." She threatens, baring her white teeth in a snarl, and when she presses the broken bottle's edge to his lips, he cracks. She thinks that it might have been that little extra telling him that she's been around Joker, so she's probably a crazy bitch.

"Fine, get that outta my face! He's at 1617 Mangrove Street, the old house on the corner! Setting up shop!" The man tells her, and she tosses him aside and drops the bottle, preparing to walk away and find this place. When she hears his footsteps behind her, too close to be innocent, she grabs the lid off the trashcan and turns, swinging. It catches him in the side of the head, and he goes down. Julia, now hurried, tosses the lid aside and walks out of the alleyway, hunting down the streets for Mangrove.

It's night by the time she finally finds the house, standing at the door of the imposing building, and with slight hesitation, she pushes open the door and walks in. The living room is empty, decrepit furniture moth eaten and dirty. She hears, however, commotion in back, and walks towards it, down the hallway and past the empty doorway to the kitchen, coming towards the end of the hallway with three doors. One to the left, one to the right, and one right in front of her. The middle one is just a closet. The one to the left she decides to open, and peeks in. She sees motion, as people are apparently making something. While she's staring, she doesn't see or hear who's behind her and they club her with something blunt and heavy, and she instantly passes out and slumps to the floor.

* * *

When she opens her eyes again, she's in a chair and apparently tied to it. Her scarf is gone, and she sees that someone is opposite her in the dim room, back to her, looking at something. When she coughs, they pick something up off the desk and pull it over their head, before turning around to face her.

"What are you doing here?" They ask, and their voice is garbled and growling. From the frame of their body, Julia guesses that it's a man, though she can't be sure. She tries to answer as best she can.

"I'm…looking for Crane. Dr. Crane." She says, and her voice is hoarse.

"Why?" The man asks, and from the light outside and the fact he's standing in front of a window, she can't see what he looks like. Julia furrows her brow, wondering why she's even answering to this guy.

"I don't need to tell you. Someone…told me he'd be here. I need to talk to him."

"About what? Tell me."

"No." Julia answers, in a deadpan, and she thinks she hears him sigh. He turns back to the desk and digs in a drawer, before walking towards her and into her view. She sees, and is subsequently terrified by, the mask that he's wearing. It's nothing but a burlap sack, like the kind you get potatoes in, but for some reason, the crudely cut eyes and mouth are highly unsettling.

"Deep breaths." He tells her, leaning in her face, and before she realizes what's going on, he's used the small spray canister attached to his wrist by an elastic band, and white gas flies in her face. She automatically sucks in a breath and then coughs, and feels horror creep up on her with icy fingers. The floor seems to sway, in her vision, and as she coughs, she keeps her head turned down to look at the floor, and refuses to look up at him because she knows what'll happen.

"Look at me. What do you see, _Ju-li-a_?" He asks, turning her head up forcefully and as soon as she sees what the mask has become, she screams. The eyes are wide and black, like two deep holes into nothing, and the mouth is wide open and full of sharp teeth, and beyond the teeth is pure, unsettling blackness. Blackness runs down the face of the bag like tears, and the color is so inhumanly dark that it threatens to devour her.

"What do you want to see Crane for?" He asks again, and cups a hand over her mouth when she starts to scream. "Be silent. Tell. Me." He's very annoyed, and Julia manages to stutter out an answer.

"L-left Joker!" She screeches, and as the man speaks, the mask's stitch mouth pours out writhing maggots that fall into her lap.

"Why here, though? Why do you think he wants you any more than Joker does?"

I…I…I don't know!!" Julia wails, in terror, and hangs her head. "Voices…have to…_Crane_!" She shrieks his name, and hears the masked man sigh again before turning and walking over towards the desk, grabbing something before walking back, grabbing her by her blond hair and jerking her head up to face him, and gassing her again. She once again sucks in the gas, hacking and coughing. She watches as the mask returns from a snarling, drooling thing to a regular burlap sack again. An antidote? After she calms down, he tosses the antidote aside and reaches up, pulling off the mask, and retrieving glasses from his pocket to put back on his face. Julia just stares.

"C…Crane?" She says his name confusedly, as he puts his glasses back onto his face and then shakes his hair out a bit, fixing it smoothly again and then staring at her with his impassive blue eyes.

"Yes. I thought you'd have figured it out yourself by now, but apparently not." He says in his natural monotone, and she glares, continuing to breathe deeply, coughing softly now and then. "Now what are you here for? Shelter? Care and compassion? Why would I give you any of these things, when you've already taken up my time?"

She hangs her head, unable to answer that question, still tied to the chair and unable to move from it. After a moment of silence, he tosses the mask into a ratty armchair and walks around the room, out of Julia's line of sight.

"How did you get those scars? Joker have a temper tantrum?" Crane asks her, with a very uninterested tone, and she hesitates to answer.

_Tell him. You're better than he is, why would you care?_ The voice appears from nowhere, a soft whisper with dark intent, and Julia finds herself spurred on to talk.

"I screwed up on a job; saved a hostage from exploding with the bomb strapped to her chest, screwed up the mangled thing that he called a 'plan'. He decided that he needed to punish me or something." Julia speaks in monotone, before feeling the restraints slacken around her midsection and arms.

"Heroic. Didn't you learn that no good deed goes unpunished?" Crane asks her in his deadpan manner, and she laughs slightly, though it's humorless.

"Yeah. It didn't stick 'til recently." She looks back at Crane, and he has his arms folded across his chest as he stares at her, straight through her.

"And you've never answered me. What do you want me to do about it? I won't coddle you. I'm very busy with my own operations." He informs her, and she shrugs exhaustedly.

"I…I really just don't know. I wanted to get away from there, I can't work in Gotham because I have no identity that doesn't have an 'Arkham Escapee' tag to it. I…thought I'd ask you…" She trails off, and Crane picks up the slack.

"If you could work for me? Do you even know what I _do_?"

"Erm…I could _learn_…"

Crane sighs under his breath, as if he's very tired of dealing with this woman, and looks out the window. The curtains are drawn again, so that people wanting to catch a peek will be met with nothing but fluttering curtains of a deep rust color. "I'm not going to spend valuable time teaching you how to do a job that I need to have done quickly. Get out."

With that , despair crushes over Julia. A moment later, she snaps and stands up from her chair, walking over to him quickly, angrily. He turns back to face her in enough time for her to grab the front of his shirt and jerk his face close to hers, glaring harshly at him. He's slightly taller than she is, and so she has to look a little upwards.

"Listen," She seethes, and Crane's eyes seem to glint and then narrow at the complete change in posture, in tone of voice, body language, everything about her. Besides, Julia would never dare touch him for fear of what the little canister attached to his wrist could do to her again. "I don't _have_ any other choices. Either you help me, or I let the cops know about your operation, yours and Joker's."

"And you would give yourself up as martyr just to spite me?" He asks her, nonchalantly, and she grits her teeth.

"You bet I would."

He's not bothered at all by this threat; he could gas her again and then let her mind rot from the pure terror of a highly concentrated dose straight to the lungs, or he could have her killed in an instant. But this is slightly interesting, and he wants to pursue it a bit longer before he gets rid of her.

"Michelle, how are you feeling?" He asks her, and she seems to slip a moment, blinking, looking confused.

"Huh? I'm…my mouth kind of hurts, still." She mumbles, before remembering her situation and straightening up. "What say you, Crane?"

"Julia, I don't know what you want me to do." He states, keeping a very close eye on her now. Her eyes narrow and harden, and she grips the front of his shirt harder.

"I want you to help me out, you moron!" She growls, and he takes her hands and pries them off of his clothing, letting go of them and turning to walk away.

"I don't have any use for you, Schwarzwald." Crane says, distantly, and turns around in time for her to catch him across the face with a hard slap. As soon as she slaps him, he snatches her hand and bends her forefingers back, further and further so that she digs her nails into his palm and drops to her knees. A very simple test to see if his theory is correct, and she doesn't even catch that he's doing it.

"What is your name?" He asks her, though Scarecrow is beginning to tell him to break her fingers. She looks up at him, eyes wide, tearing up slightly now, and she growls two words at him.

"The Second."

He lets go of her hand, Scarecrow letting out an annoyed groan, Julia clutching her hand to her chest.

"Fine. I don't see why I should let a willing worker turn away; since you've been subjected to the gas on a long-term basis, I need to see what effects a newer mix would have on you, and I would like to see if you build up an immunity to it. You will be my test subject." He walks around her, towards the door, picking up the mask on his way. "You will do what I say, when I say it, with no argument or I _will_ have you killed. Is that made perfectly clear?" Crane glances back to her, turning slightly to do so, and Julia turns back and looks at him, too.

"Y…yes, sir."

"Yes, _Doctor_."

He wants to see if she'll say it, and prove that she's willing to give her loyalty to him like she did to Joker. After a moment where she battles with herself over whether she wants to demean herself like that or not, she manages to say it.

"Yes, Doctor Crane." She says, and he allows the slightest of smirks. She glares back, before he once again regains an expression of apathy and walks out the door.

"We begin in the morning. And take care of that Chelsea Smile of yours, or it'll get infected."


	39. Plots

Julia follows Crane's orders to the word after he leaves, and proceeds to find peroxide and splash it onto her mouth. She then spends about five minutes cursing and swearing, before dabbing the excess peroxide away and looking at herself in the dirty bathroom mirror. The jagged slices carving across her once-smooth cheeks are ghastly when they're irritated by the peroxide; they're an angry pinkish red, and they _hurt_. She touches them gingerly, and sees black thread poking out like a wild hair. She digs into a drawer and finds a pair of scissors, and is just about to cut the thread when she gets a very close look at her face again. Her skin tone is very pale, ashen, sickly, dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, dull eyes that were once vivid.

And she stares at that carved smile, and after a moment, she opens her mouth as far as she can and places the open scissor blades into the corner of her barely-healed wounds. If she's going to have a permanent smile, then it's going to be even grander than the one on man who gave it to her. She steels herself, and closes the scissor blades with a metallic snipping.

* * *

When Crane walks back into the room he left Julia in, he sees nothing in the bedroom itself. He does, however, hear snipping noises from the bathroom, and thinks he might hear sobs. This alarms him, though not very much, since she's not actually something he needs. And so, out of curiosity more than anything else, he walks to the small adjoining bathroom and looks in at what she's doing, and just stares.

The smile that the Joker carved for her? She's made it bigger with her pair of dirty scissors. Blood drips from her chin at a steady pace, and there are drops of it all over the counter top, though most of it is staining the sink she hangs her head over. Now her wounds are not just from right under her cheekbones to the corners of her mouth; she's gone so far as to begin to carve upwards and is getting dangerously close to her jaw hinges. The edge of the blade has continuously nicked her skin and now the outward scarring goes up to right below her ears. After one more snip to make them raggedly even, she sees his reflection in the mirror and turns towards him with wide, crazed, desperate eyes.

"I'm still pretty, aren't I?" She asks him, desperately, taking a dangerous step forward. Crane glances between her ruined face and the scissors in her hand, held with the point upwards. She's dangerous, she's too unbalanced right now and he needs to choose his words extremely carefully.

"Am I pretty?" She asks again, as Crane takes a cautionary step backwards. He weighs his options and the risks: he can say 'yes', and either placate her or cause her to do something like scream 'liar' and lunge at him with the scissors, or he can say 'no', and either have her break down in hysterical tears or become angry and try to replicate her wounds on _him_. Crane isn't a gambling man, though Scarecrow urges him to tell her that she's a horrific thing, and after a calm moment of thought, he looks her straight in the eye and says, "You're about average."

She blinks, confused, and it gives him just enough time to lunge forward with a hidden sedative and smash her hand into the wall, making her drop the scissors, and then stab the syringe into her and drug her with enough tranquilizers to take down a bull elephant. She goes down after five minutes of feeble fighting, while still sobbing wildly and screaming "I'm ugly, I'm hideous, he ruined me! I'm a _**monster**_!!", and Crane watches her go unconscious on the floor.

He theorizes that she's just completely lost her mind. And not in the manner of going along with a psychopath's plans without any care at all, because that's not madness, that's psychopathy. Julia, Michelle, Schwarzwald, whoever the hell she is, she's just suffered a complete psychotic break.

'_Facial mutilation in an attempt to unconsciously remove the Joker's effect on her, and regain a sense of control? Similar situations have been seen in rape victims; a number choose to have sexual intercourse closely after the assault so that they may 'cleanse' themselves, and regain a sense of control over that aspect of their beings.'_

_**Worthless.**_ A harsh voice growls in his mind, and it's like the raking of razor blades across his psyche. When in Arkham, his little voice-slash-alter ego was calmer, cheerier. Now that he's not drugged anymore, Scarecrow has returned to a dark, ruthless monster in his mind. Crane can pretend that he can control it, but he knows he can't; it's just another primal part of him that he has no control over, like his own fears and pleasures. _**Kill the whore.**_

'_No. There is use for her yet.'_ Crane snaps, in a thought, as he sees that Julia is choking on her blood and begins to look for some way to staunch the flow before she dies of blood loss.

* * *

When she recovers control, Crane notices a distinct change in her personality. She's very happy, very cheerful, even though her mouth is full of cotton balls and that section of her head is wrapped around with white bandaging, a series of white bandage strips circling around from under her nose to under her bottom lip, wrapping around behind her neck and in a circling pattern around. She can't speak, but she's very joyous most of the time. It's definitely madness; the loss of her beauty, the mutilation, has finally destroyed her sanity.

She also keeps those large scissors on her at all times. And she hasn't washed off the blood yet. At first he took them away from her and wouldn't give them back, no matter how she plead, but as time passes, a week or so, and he sees this marked change in personality, he decides to risk it and let her have them. She doesn't do anything with them, just keeps them on her. Objects of macabre comfort for her broken self. He's seen people attach themselves to some aspect of their traumatic experience as a coping mechanism, and blades must be hers. She doesn't want the wounds sewed shut; wants to keep them open, though that makes many normal tasks like eating and laughing impossible, and highly risky for infection. Not that it's really a big concern of his; he's more concerned about starting production on his toxin again, which is proving difficult, seeing as he's only got a limited amount of those blue flowers that Ra's Al Ghul provided him with. He's been negotiating with an agent of a crime organization from overseas, and they have told him that they can deliver these flowers for him, and will do so if he gives them some of his toxin in aerosol form. He's been negotiating for a while, now, on how much of his toxin he's going to give them; they want much more than he can provide and still keep enough for himself with. He's also dealing with cops sticking their noses where they're not welcome, greedy workers (of which there are few) asking for more pay, and being under constant threat of Joker deciding to blow the Narrows sky high if he so chooses. And everyone knows that there's no way to know if and when he does.

In short, Julia is low on his list of concerns.

Time passes, and she's able to remove the bandages and cotton balls without bleeding to death. The scars have gone from ugly, which they were, to horrific; her mouth is two to three times larger than it should be, and it's twisted up into a smile that reaches her ears. As if she were trying to make herself into a modern-age Black Dahlia, he notes. She has the corners of her too-large mouth pierced shut with silver rings, almost like small hoop earrings, to hold her mouth shut and allow her to look slightly more normal, and be able to do more normal things easier, like eating and laughing and things like that.

Julia also lets him know that she's not going to go by Schwarzwald anymore. She informs him, cheerfully, that she wants to be called Angelface now. He informs her that he doesn't care, and returns to his work.

Crane observes her reactions to various different emotional stimuli. He ignores her, and she toddles off to amuse herself in some way or another, which is apparently talking to herself…or someone else. He is cruel to her, and she loves it; she smiles like a child up at him, as he spits at her to get away from him, and does as he says, skipping off. He attempts kindness towards her, and though she accepts it, she does not let him touch her, and seems quite eager to put distance between herself and him afterwards, almost as if she were worried for his safety in being near her.

All in all, she is a perfect candidate for his research. A creature that is happy in madness, needs no outwards stimuli to be happy and content with herself; someone that only wishes to serve, but does not demand love or affection in return. Then again, he's only seen her for a little bit of time, so she may change somehow soon. But he thinks that with her like this, he can stop acting like he cares about her and show his real colors.

Over the next two weeks, he is the sadistic monster that he has always been. He tries many things with her mind, and drives her to tears many, many times during these highly aggressive therapy sessions, if they can even be called that. He tells her that he will abandon her, that he will kill her, he gases her with various new twists on the fear toxin compound to see if they affect her or not, what with her having an immunity to the compound used before he was thrown in his own mental facility.

In short, he tries his hardest to mentally decimate her. And though she cries and begs him not to leave her, she never breaks.

In the end, when he's just finished telling her that there is no man on the planet that will ever want to touch her now that she looks so monstrous, and she's on her knees crying into her hands, he kneels down enough to pry her hands off of her face and look into her eyes, as she looks up at him.

"Julia, would you like to help me do more than just this?" He asks her, calmly, and she nods. Of course she does. She's desperate for any affection at all, even if it's just imagined. "Then I will need your help in the future. With a plan of mine."

Over the next half hour, he explains to her a plan so outrageous, so insane, so completely terrifying in prospect, that she's transfixed by him, sitting on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest, staring with childlike eyes. Crane thinks that's a temporary regression that should fade away soon enough; he's seen it before. After he finishes, she stares a moment longer, before watching him hold a hand down to her, to help her up.

"Is this a yes or a no?" Crane asks, and after a moment, she takes his hand and nods.

"Yes, doctor." Julia tells him, and he knows that with her help, he might actually pull this off.

First thing's first: they finish a certain amount of toxin. And then?

They call the Joker.


	40. Partners

A dim warehouse on the outskirts of Gotham. The ground is muddy from a recent downpour of rain, a sheet of it near constant for the past four days. Now it's merely a drizzle, a gray veil hanging over the sky. It's noontime, as a minivan (a sleek black minivan, but it's still a minivan) pulls up towards this warehouse, up a hill, spraying the mud as the tires get stuck and whirl helplessly about. Eventually, every occupant has to get out and just trek the rest of the way up the hill, swearing and spitting. They slog through the mud, up the hill, to the warehouse at the top. Why a warehouse was built on top of a hill on the outskirts of Gotham City, none of them were sure of, and few cared enough to think about it.

When they walk up to the warehouse doors, the four thugs knock their boots against the wall or try to wipe them off so that they don't slip on the concrete inside; one figure waits behind them, still, silent, staring at the doors and unspeaking. A slightly shorter figure stands beside it, very close, waiting. When the thugs, shouldering or juggling their high caliber weapons with the rusted steel handles to the warehouse doors, get the doors open, the two thin figures, with a reverence and grace all their own, walk inside briskly to the icy cold atmosphere of the meeting place that has absolutely nothing to do with temperature.

"When is he arriving?" One thug asks, as he watches his boss adjust the sack over his head so that he may see out of the roughly slashed eyeholes again. He's wearing a dirty business suit, possibly in an attempt to look professional, maybe as a relic of times long past, when he was an esteemed doctor and not just another psycho in Gotham. His boss, once finished adjusting the mask, glances over at him and answers in cool tone.

"Whenever he feels like arriving. You know who we're dealing with." He makes a slight gesture; a spinning at where his temple is under the burlap material to indicate that the man they're meeting with is probably not all there. Definitely not all there, to be precise. To be _completely_ precise and clear to the point, everyone standing in this warehouse is five hundred percent sure that there's going to be at least one _incident_ at this 'meeting'.

"Jonny, you've _learned_." A sickly sweet patronizing voice comes from across the warehouse, echoing from the side of the large room sunk in pitch shadows, and the entire party of newcomers turns their heads at the same time to look at who spoke.

"Joker. Let's talk." Scarecrow invites the man just now stepping into the light of the single, low-hanging bulb; he's still as much a terror as always, with his imposing coat that makes him look around five times bigger than he really is, the constantly and grotesquely smeared makeup that make his eyes look like gaping sockets. And he's smiling. As soon as Scarecrow speaks, the Joker glances through the small group of thugs and the boss himself and stands, as he has his own thugs slink up from the shadows. They've both apparently come from opposite sides of the warehouse, which is perfect for the dramatic tension both parties are feeling at the moment. The easily recognizable figure of Harley Quinn stands behind him, toting what looks like an Uzi.

"You look a bit muddy. Rough time up?" Joker queries, and Scarecrow doesn't seem to react to the jab, though it's impossible to tell with the mask over his head obscuring his expressions or the voice changer turning his voice into a growling, garbled mess.

"I hope we didn't keep you waiting." He says flippantly, though it's obvious from the garbled tone that he doesn't really give a damn if he kept Joker waiting or not. Joker seems to either clear his throat or giggle; it's too hard to tell which.

"Not at all. I though we kept _you_ waiting, Jonny Crow."

Though one can't see it, Crane narrows his eyes from behind his mask. He prefers Scarecrow, he can stand Crane, he dislikes Jonathan, but god_dammit_ does he hate being called Jonny. Saying so out loud, however, would be an ill choice at this point in negotiations. Maybe later on.

"In any case," Scarecrow brushes the disgusting pet name off as he gestures to the person sticking close to his left, and they seem to perk up slightly, "Let's talk business."

"Talking dirty? I didn't know you were that kind of man, Crane." The Joker taunts, and he's disappointed when Crane doesn't react the way he'd have liked. You know; at all.

"Joker," Scarecrow begins, and he's set on trading a few barbs with Joker until they've both loosened up enough to get serious, "I wouldn't dare. You only talk dirty to the Batman." He says this very flippantly, though the mask makes this hard to see. Joker doesn't laugh, only smiles humorlessly.

"And you talk dirty to that little voice in your head, don't you?" He shoots back, and Scarecrow glances aside at the person close to him.

"Hardly. I thought you'd like to see this little number again; she's done herself up prettier than you last saw her. Angelface, why don't you let him see your pretty face?" Scarecrow almost croons, though that's difficult with the voice changer. He knows how to manipulate her mangled sense of vanity, and he knows that she's aware of this, and he also knows that it's her that decides when he manipulates her or not. She steps forward, daintily, and when she pulls the plastic bag off of her head (the woman has been trying out so many different 'looks' that hide her face, but none so far have suited her fancy), she meets eyes with the Joker and flashes a brilliant smile.

"Hey there, Joker," She says, and it's in a very pleased sing-song voice, though the light in her tune doesn't reach her eyes. She sees that his eyes widen a very small fraction, and he smiles at her. It's not warm, not in the slightest, but things in her stomach that haven't quite decayed yet flutter rotten butterfly wings at seeing him happy to see her. "Feeling happy lately?"

Joker, meanwhile, is examining Schwarzwald's face. Well, she used to be Schwarzwald; now she's Angel something. Angelface, that was it. Vain little creature. He remembers how long her scars were though, he always remembers things like that to the second because it's nice to relive those memories now and then, and they're not the same length. Something made them longer. They're far past where his end, reaching out towards her jaw hinges. He sees little silver rings through her mouth, about three on each side, holding the corners of her lengthened mouth shut. Her eyes are bright, too bright to be sane. She's gone mad and he knows it. And not the mad she thought she was. There's a large difference between helping a psychopath and actually being one, and he can tell that what was once Michelle is now a few shades less than sane.

He loves it. Such a joy in making a normal, miserable citizen of Gotham into…well, this. You can almost see the joy in her eyes. Not really, but if you close your eyes you can see it very well.

"Schwarzy," He says her old name, and she seems to wrinkle her nose, "You look, ah, _well_."

"Angelface, not Schwarzy or Schwarzwald. And I'm doing wonderful!" She sings the last word, and turns around to prance towards Scarecrow. Joker notices that her clothes are the tattered, stained remains of a white dress. She wants to be an angel so bad, he can almost taste it himself. It's sickeningly sweet. Her hair is blond and her eyes are blue, her skin is pale and her scars are horrific. She's a beautiful, insane little thing. She's like his Harley, sort of. Harley, though, is more controlled, more attached to reality.

Harley Quinn is just a love freak. Angelface is a dame in a technicolor land of crushed dreams and tattered sanity.

He watches her prance towards Scarecrow and hover at his left, but not touching him. Of course she won't touch Jonny Crane; the man has always had issues with being touched without his express permission. The Joker's seen it firsthand.

"Ah, I see. Looks like Crow here's the one you ran off to."

"I just can't turn away a soul in need," Scarecrow states, though it's obvious that he's being sarcastic, "Breaks my heart." He taps the area over his heart once, twice, before becoming serious again. "And so, you can probably guess that we want to strike up a partnership. You have the manpower. I have this," He holds up a metal canister that reflects the low lamplight, and Joker cocks his head slightly.

"Still on with the laughing gas of yours, Jonny? It didn't work last time; what's so different about it this time? I really hate investing time and money into projects that are gonna fall flat on their faces."

"Oh," Crane starts, giving a dramatic sweep of his arm in a horizontal gesture, as if he were gesturing to a grand crowd, his hand open as he does, "But this is no ordinary mix. Let me show you." He turns suddenly, grasps Angelface by the back of her neck, and drags her forward while spraying her in the face. She coughs, wheezes, and when she looks up at the mask again, Joker watches her eyes go wide and her mouth open in the beginnings of a scream. When the noise escapes her, strangled, terrified beyond imagination, Scarecrow throws her away from himself, and she collides with the floor and scrambles away.

"This mix was created with Angel here, the only human on earth with a natural immunity. I just created a toxin that bypassed that immunity; no matter if they have an antidote, or if they attempt to make one, the fact that I took the original chemical and changed it to be stronger than a natural immunity means…well," Scarecrow gives a slight gesture, a small jerk of the head, towards Angelface, who is now in the process of screaming blue murder with her hands over her eyes, "it's a lot stronger than the old mix. You don't just see your worst fear anymore; you see an amalgamation of all of them. Angel, here, is currently in a wonderful land of rotten milk and soured honey. Tell me what you see, Angel." He says the last line as a calm demand, and she begins to choke out a response. Well-trained.

"Corpses…spiders, worms, pitch black!!" She shrieks, beginning to sob.

"She's been the test subject for all the new mixes, until I found the one that worked most potently. She makes a great lab rat." Scarecrow says, almost uninterestedly, before tossing a secondary canister to a thug. "Gas her." He orders, and the thug pins her down and sprays her with the antidote. "I made an antidote as well, for you and your men. Figured that you wouldn't be so keen on experiencing the effects yourself."

Joker watches Angelface calm down, slowly; she's foaming at the mouth slightly, breathing like she's run a marathon, crying, drooling; looks like hell. It looks like a pretty potent poison. "So, Crane," He begins, looking from the woman recovering on the floor to the sack-headed mad scientist beside her, "You want to cut a deal? Poison our fair little city? I assume that during this little rendezvous, you're going to expect me to run off and raise chaos?"

"Correct. By the time you find him, if my plan goes right, the Batman is going to be suffering his worst fears and some very lucid hallucinations. It'll be some of the most fun you've ever had." Scarecrow urges, as Angelface crawls towards him and grasps the leg of his pants. He kicks her off, and continues watching Joker, who seems to be thinking. After a minute or two of pure, deafening silence, he matches eyes with Scarecrow again.

"Fine. A little team-up could do a man good; refresh his ideas. And you want?"

"Money, of course; we'll be needing it for the distribution of the chemical." Scarecrow rubs his thumb against the side of his forefinger, as if just saying 'we need money' isn't enough to show what he means. "And you can have the Batman when it's all over."

Joker thinks again, now smiling slightly. Eerily. "You don't just want money, do you? It's in your eyes, Crane."

Scarecrow hesitates a moment, before answering as he turns back to the warehouse door, tugging on one of Angelface's tangled locks gently as he passes, a small sign for her to follow. "I want Arkham back."

"Done. Keep in touch, Jonny. And Angel," Joker says her name and she turns around, standing and preparing to follow Crane outside again, and if she didn't have the scars the expression she's wearing, of curiosity and something close to naivety, would make her look like an innocent. She stares at the Joker as he smiles at her, and it's a horrifying smile that would rattle any sane person to their very core. "Don't forget to _smile_, dear."

He sees her eyes go wide, sees her relive her terror, and laughs in a sharp, barking manner when she whirls around and hurries to make it to Crane's side. She unconsciously grasps at his arm for comfort and he shoves her away, reminding her not to touch, and she instead stays at his left, silent as the grave. Joker turns to his armed men, bodyguards to match Crane's bodyguards, and Harley, signaling to them that it's time to go. The two parties are a team now, but they're anything but friendly.

They depart, Joker in his van and Scarecrow by trudging down the muddy hill to his minivan. Gotham doesn't know it, but soon, the fairest city is about to suffer another cataclysmic assault.


	41. Trysts

The plan has been set. Once Crane creates enough toxin, he'll call his dearest 'partner', and set up how they're going to gas the city.

Until that day comes, back to producing said potent fear toxin. Back to testing it. When Crane isn't in his office, which nobody is allowed in except for himself, he's walking around and he's not Crane, but Scarecrow, and he's a bitch to everybody. Does nothing but cut people down with cruel comments when he's in the off good mood, or make sure to be a real bastard to every living thing if he's in a bad mood.

Unfortunately enough, the closest living thing at hand is usually the easy-to-abuse Angelface. She wanders around in her own little Wonderland, dreamily, in her white dress that's beyond dirty and ragged; the thing needs to be washed thoroughly, but she doesn't have any other clothes and Crane sure isn't going to spend their precious (and low) amount of money on a shopping spree. So she remains in her one dress, her one set of underclothes, and tries to wash what she can. The Narrows apartment that they're using as a base is abandoned, and has no electricity, water, and heat, any amenities at all, and so her hair is oily and tangled and she can't remember the last time she took a nice, scalding hot bath.

She wanders around the apartment, the other nearby apartments, equally abandoned, and does what she can to pass the time. Crane is not a benevolent boss, not at all; his moods usually stay even, tempered, but when he's Scarecrow, he has extreme mood swings at little to no notice. Crane keeps Angelface away from him, because he doesn't want her to hover, which she does. Scarecrow sometimes seeks her out just to see if he can ruin her day to lighten his own mood. He never hits her, because he doesn't have to; that's not his game, that's Joker's. He just likes to drop her self-esteem to absolute zero, make her feel useless, treat her like a dog.

It's a great mood brightener.

Angelface sits on her couch, the ratted old thing in the living room of their base, reading an equally ratted copy of a good book. She's reread it three times. The thugs are either in the back or not here at all, and she has the living room to herself. The only light in the deeply shadowed room is the window at her back, where orange-tinted lamplight pours in and casts a sickish tone over her skin. The room is drenched in pure silence, interrupted only occasionally by the sound of engines so far away. A good deal of people moved away from the Narrows after Scarecrow's reign of terror; the only people still here are drug dealers, prostitutes, junkies, or people that just can't afford to leave.

With her fake blue eyes (her vision is starting to go; Crane was able to get possession of her old contact prescription and have it refilled for her, which was probably her Christmas present if he's even going to give her one, which he's not) focused on the words on the page, her knees pulled up to her chest and her book sitting on them, unabashedly (and unknowingly) flashing her panties at the opposite wall, as her white dress is a girlish little thing that only goes to her knees, she doesn't even hear the faint footsteps coming steadily in her direction, so focused on her book is she. And she fails to notice until he strides out of the hallway and into the room, his once-nice business suit now dirty and worn, blue eyes flashing and short, stylish black hair needing a trim and also in disarray, as if he's been running his hand through it over and over again. She lets her book fall flat against her lap, staring at him. He looks so tired.

"Dr. Crane?" She asks, tentatively, careful in what inflection she has in her tone of voice, and he casts her a stare that freezes her blood. It's so intense, so…blank. It's as if he's surprised to see her there. He has his glasses off; they're held limply in his right hand by the silver frames, and for a moment, he has an actual expression on his face aside from apathy. He looks so exhausted, so worn ragged.

Crane doesn't answer her vocally when she says his name, only stares at her a moment longer. He's been hit with another low point; depression comes now and then, it's just something he's become accustomed to. Lonely nights with nothing but reminders of what esteem you once held, how high you once stood; those things will do that to you. He watches her stare a moment longer, before setting down her copy of American Psycho and standing up, watching him. He notices that her eyes aren't glazed and blank anymore; they're focused, but not cold. When she takes steps towards him, bare-footed, as she doesn't wear shoes when they're at the base, he takes a step or two backwards. He doesn't want her to try and fix it, because it'll only make him feel worse.

"Crane," She says it quietly now, and for some reason, it sounds more focused than her normal speaking is. He doesn't like how clear her eyes are, for once. They're normally hazy, clouded by her unbalanced nature. When she walks towards him, tentatively, he takes a step back to leave; he doesn't need her, because he's never needed anyone. More importantly, he doesn't _want_ her pity.

When she stops him by gripping the lapels of his suit, he sees the worried look in her eyes and feels disgust building in his chest. She pities him? The woman with a Glasgow smile to her ears pities _him_? He turns his head to break eye contact, now staring down the pitch-black hallway that leads back to his study, the little room he can isolate himself in and converse with the insidious voice in his mind.

_**Are you afraid, Jonny boy?**_

The dark question echoes in his mind, and he shoves away the black whispers. Why did he even come out here? He wanted fresh air, though none of the air in the Narrows is what you could call 'fresh'.

"Jonathan," She says, urgently, and he feels her warm hands on his cheeks, gently turning his head so that he is looking at her again. Her eyes are soft, and she speaks with a firm but not unkind tone. Why she seems so lucid right now, Crane doesn't know, but he's more focused on the fact that she's touching him without his permission. He doesn't speak, just raises his arms and takes hold of her wrists, one in each hand, and begins to pry them off of his face, wanting to feel the cool wintry night air on his face and not her warm hands. She won't let him push her away that easily, and merely leans up, putting them face-to-face. She focuses on his eyes, and he stares at her scars. There's nothing romantic about their position, though it may look otherwise; Crane is disgusted by her apparent attempts at showing him kindness and is resisting the urge to do something violent, as Scarecrow is seeming to urge him to do, and Angelface is a highly unstable woman that's feebly trying to reach out to a man that she's devoted to only because of his misanthropy.

"Come on, Dr. Crane," she sighs, letting go of his face and instead closing her hand around his wrist, pulling him gently towards the kitchen. "There's a bottle of something alcoholic with our names on it."

He should pull away from her. He should probably slap her for trying to order him around, and then walk off to lock himself away in his study while Angelface sits out her, hand on her reddening cheek, chewing on her lower lip sorrowfully. But he doesn't. He just doesn't care tonight. And so he lets her pull him to the kitchen, and he sits down to watch her fuss around the kitchen and sit across from him at the table, finally, putting a bottle of whiskey in the center of this table, between them. Their eyes meet and she smiles slightly, nervously, and watches him stare holes through her.

After a long moment of silence, Crane reaches for the bottle.

* * *

By daybreak, the thugs under Crane's hire come back to check on him. He normally calls them when he wants them there, and he hasn't today. One in particular is shoved up ahead, and when he walks into the apartment, fearing the worst (a visit from the Batman and a double-cross by Joker come to mind), he sees nothing to indicate thus. And so he and the others do what they're paid to do; they get to work in creating the toxin.

Later, Scarecrow and Angelface reappear, as the thugs get back to work, and though neither will speak of what happened, they both reek of whiskey and sex. Oh, and they have massive hangovers; Scarecrow is a dozen times more vicious than normal, and instead of being her normal harmless childlike self, Angelface is a total bitch, screaming at the odd person that happens to be a little too loud next to her, and spends all day on her ratty couch, her head under a pillow and unresponsive.

Crane-slash-Scarecrow is/are pissed about it happening, or even letting her talk them into getting drunk in the first place. Crane's pride is shot; he was sure that he had more self-control than that. Letting a woman get him drunk and in the sack; it's almost laughable. He's the one that manipulates people; not the one that lets people get him drunk and do whatever they'd like with him. How long has it been since he's gotten drunk, anyway? He drinks...well, _drank_ socially, usually only when meeting with important people, back in his Arkham days. Never drank just to get drunk. The throbbing headache reminds him why that was such a good idea.

Scarecrow is pissed because he has a hangover. He's perfectly fine with the sex; enjoyed it, himself, even if Crane won't admit that _he_ did. The hangover sucks, though.

_**I told you that you needed to get laid, and when you do, you're all pissy. Can't fucking please some people.**_

'_Shut up, Scarecrow.'_

As Crane fumes silently, Angelface is equally pissy. Getting drunk with Crane was a horrible idea; why did she even think of it? Not to mention that she can't remember much of the night; not that she really _wants_ to, anyway. She just thought that the man looked so despondent last night, so alone, and she couldn't help but reach out to him.

The night wasn't supposed to end in Crane's 'study', which turns out to be a little room with adjoining bathroom all to himself. It really wasn't supposed to end in his bed, or maybe on his floor, which is where Angelface woke up. Anyway, the only memory she has of it is being cold and incredibly hot at the same time, long pianist's fingers gliding up her back and then twisting in her hair to pull, roughly, her nails digging into and clawing down his back, her teeth sunk into his bare shoulder and the sensation of burlap scratching her face and neck.

Now, all she has is a headache and some embarrassing memories. Crane may be taking his hangover in stride, but Angelface has had to slip away, though 'stagger wildly' would be a better descriptor, to vomit outside a few times, since the bathroom's toilet doesn't work. She's in a horrific mood, screams at people that slight her in some small or imagined way and then lays down on the couch and hides her head. How long has it been since she's been drunk? It'd have to be way back, when she still had a first and last name. She can't even recall the last time she was really drunk. 'Sleep with your insane boss' sort of drunk.

By the time the night rolls around, the two are still ignoring one another almost completely, and the amount of toxin they need is almost done. A silent agreement passes between them; 'You don't talk, I won't either and it never, ever happened'.

So it never did. According to the two of them, anyway. Though Angelface's scalp still aches from having her hair yanked on and Crane's wincing from the scratches down his back.

The two of them still aren't talking with one another. Either it's embarrassment, pride, or a combination of the two, but either way, they're still not speaking.

Angelface, three days after waking up tangled with Crane on his floor (apparently, when he's drunk he doesn't automatically wake up at six AM like every other day) and the entire hellstorm that came afterwards, is sleeping on her couch in the living room. She's back to her ditzy, spacey self, a copy of A Clockwork Orange laying on the floor where she fell asleep and dropped it. She found some books on a shelf in one of the nearby abandoned apartments (though Angelface herself wasn't paying much attention to whether it was actually abandoned or not) and brought some of them back to keep herself occupied. Crane went back to his study, though he's probably not asleep since the house is very quiet and it's easy to hear his pacing footsteps on the wood flooring. The hired thugs are in one of the nearby abandoned apartments that Angelface has broken into and scoped out. In any case, it's very quiet, almost silent except for the faraway noises of Gotham.

There's creaking. Soft footsteps. Angelface opens her eyes, waking from her light doze, and then glances at the windows outside the apartment. Though there are ratty curtains covering them, she can see the outlines of people, and they're not the hired thugs, because the hired thugs (1) Don't come at night, (2) Don't need to sneak around, and (3) don't tote heavy weaponry.

Soft speaking; she can hear them talking, quietly. "Is the other team around back, in case they try to run out the back door?" One voice asks, lowly, and Angelface knows instantly who it is. She's already slipping to the floor, moving as slowly towards the hallway as possible.

"Yeah. Let's go in on three." A second voice suggests, and Angelface moves quicker.

"One." She's heading for the kitchen instead of the hallway now, knowing that if she runs back there then they'll be pidgeonholed into the rear of the house. Crane will hear when they bust in, if he doesn't already know they're here and have a plan.

"Two." She stops crawling and moves to her feet, sprinting on the balls of her feet towards the kitchen doorway.

"Three!" The door slams open right as her blond hair disappears through the doorway, and she can hear people rushing into the living room. "On the ground!" A man yells at her back, but there's no answer. When they make a move for the kitchen, weapons held high, gunshots ring out and they dodge for cover, as Angelface crouches near a hole in the wall that's been carved there especially for this purpose and fires her handgun at them. Though her shots aren't that accurate, since she's no good with a handgun, they're accurate enough to keep the men from moving forward. She sees that they're police officers, too, so one of their backstabbing henchmen must have tipped the cops off.

"Drop your weapon and come out with your hands on your head!" One of them yells to her, and is answered with a gunshot in his direction. They're shooting back at her now, and the firefight goes on for a minute or two longer before she snaps her last clip into the gun and aims it at them again. There's a loud metallic noise, a crack, as someone with exceptional aim shoots the gun out of her hand. She snaps her hand back into her little barricade, and she stares out the hole at the policemen as they try to decide whether or not to risk her having another weapon back there. She doesn't. After a half minute, they begin to move towards her hiding spot in the kitchen, intent on arresting her. Before they can, however, something rolls out of the hallway and into the living room.

"Is that...a can?" One of the cops asks, confused, before the 'can' explodes in a cloud of white smoke, the gas pouring out rapidly and right into the cops' direction. Angelface shoots up out of her hiding spot and dashes towards the hallway, where Scarecrow is waiting for her, and the two of them rush down the hallway as they begin to hear the cops behind them either begin to yell or scream or something like that. A couple of them seem to have evaded the blast, though, and rush down the hallway after them, firing at them as they give chase.

"In here!" Scarecrow grabs Angelface's wrist and drags her down into his study, locking the door behind him, though it's a weak door and it'll probably come open with a good kick or two anyway. He drags her to a window near the back of the room, while Angelface dashes off to the corner of the room and hunts for something. She comes back a moment later, in time to see Scarecrow, apparently in a panic from the sound of the cops twisting the handle to the door, kicks the window out; it's cheap, cheap glass, and cracks with a couple blows. He's wincing, though, when he sets his foot back down, and for a moment, his female accomplice wonders if he's broken something from kicking out a window. He'd better not have.

The door flies open behind them and the two criminals hurl themselves at the window, and the glass breaks with the force of them both throwing their weight against it. They are also, unfortunately, on the second floor of a Narrows apartment, though the bottom floor is just the thug apartment building and the top is where the work gets done; as soon as the window breaks, they slide down the slanted roofing and towards a two-story drop to the grimy concrete below. Angelface tries to get a grip on anything, but the tiles she grabs break off in her hands, and she rolls helplessly towards the edge of the roof. When she drops off the edge and begins to fall, she looks up to see Scarecrow sliding down after her, though instead of rolling uselessly, he's in a sitting position with one leg held straight out for balance and the other bent at the knee, and when he gets to the edge of the roof, he grabs what he can of her; a fistful of her thick hair. She yelps in pain, as Scarecrow hooks his foot into the gutter to keep himself from rolling off with her, using it as support for his weight.

"Grab onto me, dammit!" Scarecrow snaps, the voice changer making it into a terrifying snarl, but Angelface doesn't mind it as she reaches up and closes her hand around his free one, and he lets go of her hair. There's more gunfire directed towards them; a bullet ricochets off of the brick wall in front of Scarecrow, as if the firer had been aiming at his head, and they both know that those two or so cops that escaped the gas are trying to gun them down. Another bullet ricochets off of the tiling beside him and Scarecrow loses his balance, and both he and Angelface go hurtling for the concrete. She lands on top of him, and after a second of not remembering where she was or what was happening, she recovers enough to stand up, shakily, since Crane took all of the impact.

She remembers this and instantly shoots to his side, pulling the mask up enough to see that he's still alive and still looking around, though he's coughing like he's had the air knocked out of him. Without time to spare, she helps him to his feet and puts his arm around her shoulder, and the two of them hurry away from the apartment as red and blue lights flash along the alley at their heels. Crane's mask is still hanging half off his face; he's still wheezing, trying to catch his breath, and his support, Angelface, is limping. That hitch in her hip is hurting her now, more than ever, and she's slowing down. The two of them duck down another alley and make a mad dash for the end of it, as they hear the noise of the cops dying down behind them, growing more distant by the moment.

They're almost at the end of the alleyway when a lone cop steps out in front of them, leveling his gun at Angelface's head, and after a moment, ignoring her and aiming for Scarecrow instead, before aiming back at her briefly. "Get back, I want this freak, not you." He tells her, gruffly. When she doesn't move he waves the gun threateningly. "Get on! I'll shoot you down if you don't get on out of here!"

Scarecrow feels her support leave him, and hears her walk away. Though he's still breathing heavily, he's coherent enough to know that she's abandoning him to save her own skin. Worthless.

_**This is why it's just you and me, Jonny boy**_, Scarecrow whispers inside Crane's mind, as he watches the policeman smirk and level the gun, aiming between his eyes. _**Don't trust anybody else. They're worms; they'll stab you in the back. You're better than them. We're better than them.**_

"Well," the cop says, smirking, as he presses on the trigger lightly and prepares to pull it and end Crane's life. "I guess it's goodnight, Crane."

"Guessed wrong."

The cop turns around just in time to see Angelface standing behind him, expressionless, holding out a small metal canister right in his face. He has enough time to blink before she sprays him with a face full of Crane's fear toxin, and begin hacking and coughing as she shoves him to the ground, grabbing his police-issued gun and running to Scarecrow, beginning to pull him past the cop and into a run so that they can disappear into the Narrows. He brushes her off and walks ahead of her, briskly, tugging his mask back down over his face again as he walks through the dissipating cloud of gas, hearing Angelface at his heels, like a faithful dog. The next thing he knows, he's being shoved into the wall as a gun fires, and whips around to see Angelface holding a smoking gun, the hallucinating cop dead on the concrete from a bullet wound to the head. She turns around, closing her eyes and shoving the gun into the waistband of his pants as she walks past him, limping still.

"He tried to shoot you in the back." She mutters, walking alongside him with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and Scarecrow takes her by the upper arm and walks with her to speed her up, forcing her to walk faster.

"I assumed. Walk faster; this 'escape' needs to go off without a hitch, including the one in your hip."

They eventually do find a new place to hide out; they break into an apartment in another complex, and it seems like the last people that lived there only recently left, seeing as the water and electricity and heat still work. Angelface marches into the bathroom and then locks the door, doing something in there that Crane isn't paying attention to. He drops his Scarecrow mask on a small end table near the one bed, before sitting down on this dirty bed and sighing. He retrieves his glasses from his pocket and unfolds them, putting them back on his face. He sighs, exhausted, and runs his hand through his hair; a habit he's developed in times of stress lately, and one that he plans to break himself of sooner or later.

About an hour after they arrive, time in which Crane has been spending making sure that the mattress and floor don't have used needles there to stick them with. He's found three, but he's sure that there aren't any others. And now, he wants a shower.

"Open the door," He tells Angelface through the door, knocking on it. He still doesn't want to talk to her, mainly because he remembers more about their tryst than she does and whenever he looks at her face, he remembers the sensation of her nails in his back, but he will have to talk to her now and then. "Angel, are you listening?"

When he listens closely, he can hear pained whimpering on the other side of the door. Curiously, he pushes on the door, until the flimsy wood gives way and he sees what she's doing. The white dress she wears constantly is stained in blood and she's pulled it off and standing in her underwear in front of the mirror, holding the dress against her wound in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding. She looks at him with wide eyes when he forces the door and sees her injured, and tries to cover her exposed chest with the dress when he walks in.  
"Sorry," she wheezes, pained, "Just a nick."

Crane, not amused, walks into the bathroom and rips the dress out of her hands, examining the wound as she squeals in surprise and covers her chest, also covering the wound with her arm. Crane grips her wrists and pries them away from her chest, ignoring her nudity and focusing on the bullet wound at the edge of her chest, between the last two ribs. It doesn't look like it's hit any major organs, he notes, and when she tries to get her wrists free of his grip, he just pins her against the wall and holds her there anyway.

"Stop squirming. It isn't as if I haven't seen you naked before." He snaps, coldly, and she stops squirming and glares. He ignores this, coolly, and sees that the bullet apparently isn't in her either, and that the bullet wound seems quite superficial. He looks under the counter and finds a towel that the last residents abandoned, shakes it out for spiders or needles or anything else that might be on it, and then hands it to her, before digging around the bathroom and finding a needle and thread. "Do you know how to sew?"

"Can't you do it?"

Crane just stares at her, as if she were a moron. "I'm a psychologist, not a surgeon. I thought you might know the difference." He deadpans, and she drops the towel shamelessly and takes the needle and thread away from him, running the needle under hot water.

"Fine, smartass. I'll do it. So get out." She mutters, and then watches him leave in her peripheral vision. A moment after she shuts the door, or at least tries to, he comes back in and sets something on the counter.

"It was under the kitchen counter. Keep it down when you're working; I'm going to sleep." He deadpans, leaving the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the counter and then closing the door again. She snorts at him, muttering something insulting while taking a swig of the whiskey. She stitches it up as best she can, since it's a superficial wound (probably a scrape when it comes to gunshot wounds), and though the stitches are ugly and crooked, they seem to be fine. She pulls on her bloodstained dress again and walks out into the living room, seeing Crane still awake.

"Bathroom's yours." She tells him, wincing with every step, and he passes her by and walks into the bathroom, locking the door again when he walks in. She lies on the bed and tries to sleep, but the sound of the shower keeps her up and she decides to just wait until he's done and then go to sleep, even though she's tired. While waiting, she happens to notice the mask laying on the corner of the bed, and after five minutes of trying to resist the urge to play with it, she gives in and picks it up, looking over the ugly thing. Curiously, she puts it on, and finds that the burlap scratches her skin and the thing is hot and sweaty and dear god is it itchy. She starts talking to herself and playing with the voice changer, and it makes her sound like some terrible, inhuman thing. The door to the bathroom comes open and she looks at Crane for a moment, staring as blankly as he is, before pulling his mask off quickly and dropping it at the end of the bed again. He walks out in his entire suit again, despite how dirty the thing is, and walks up towards her. Angelface keeps her eyes focused down at the bed, like a child that knows she's been naughty, until he stops right in front of her.

"Angel…" he says, calmly, and she lifts her head to look at him with an almost naïve expression. He slaps her then, as hard as he possibly can, watching with satisfaction (hidden, but still there) as her cheek begins to turn red and she stares blankly ahead of her, the force of the slap snapping her head to the left. There are things he will put up with, and then there are things that he will not tolerate no matter the circumstances. Touching that mask is one of the most unforgivable sins in Crane's eyes. It's not just a mask or a tool to him; it's almost like a fragment of himself. It's also one of the last things he owns, other than his single dirty suit. Satisfied in seeing her punished, he leans down to pick up his mask and take it away from her, hide it, and instead feels a weight against his chest, and is knocked to the floor. She settles on him, straddling his stomach, glaring down at him with her bright blue eyes, even though the blue is false.

"You listen to me, Crane," She snaps, hands flat on the carpet on either side of his head, balled into fists, "I'm not your punching bag, because I'm sick of it. I'm ditzy, and my thoughts are hazy and I talk to myself, and I even do everything you say, even when you're being mean to me." She's still in her childlike mindset, he notices through her vocabulary. But even children can be serious sometimes, and this is a thirty-five year old child. "But I'm not going to let you hit me when you want to. I'm done with letting people smack me when they feel like it. I like you, Crane; I like you a lot. Even if you're mean to me, I want you to be. Everyone that loves me dies. So please, hate me. But don't hit me anymore." Her anger fades into tears, and she rolls off of him, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, crying quietly. Childishly. Crane sits up, thinking over her words.

_**She loves you.**_

'_Why do you say that?'_

_**Look at her. She had a dozen chances to kill you, and didn't. She could've finished the plan herself, and wouldn't. She took a bullet for you, instead of just shoving you out of range. She loves you because you hate her, as we've discussed.**_

'_The many close calls tonight might have awakened whatever emotions she was attempting to hide or deny. But that's an idiotic notion. She's very aware that I despise her.'_

_**Then let her know. Use her. And tell her that you're just using her.**_ Scarecrow rasps in Crane's mind, and the sensation of the voice is like nails on a chalkboard to Crane. He's far past used to it by now, though, and so isn't affected. Crane himself glances to Angelface, now standing up and walking away, and stands up too. He's very sure that some amount of Scarecrow's inherent sadism is slipping through and influencing his decisions, but right now that doesn't really matter much.

_**Her mind is already broken. Now break her heart.**_

A deep, dark satisfaction builds in his chest at the idea of such a sadistic game, and it blooms into a sick pleasure when he walks after her, turns her around, and grasps her chin with enough pressure to show that his words are true, but not enough to hurt her.

"I despise you," Crane tells her, and watches his reflection speak in her eyes. "You're worthless to me, lower than dirt. I don't love you, the Joker doesn't love you, not one person in this entire city loves you." He tells her, calmly, and watches with hidden satisfaction as the tears roll down her cheeks again. She doesn't look away from his face, though; she's spellbound by his hatred. "But you're useful, in some respects. You can offer as a distraction if I ever need it." He breaks her heart, word by word, and enjoys every minute of it. She tells him that she wants him to hate her, but she doesn't mean it. She wants him to love her back. It's a natural desire for a loving human being. Unfortunately enough, Angelface has had the ill luck of falling for a misanthropist that refuses to let himself love and doesn't even know if he can anymore. In either case, he hates her and he's going to let her know it. When she looks away, turns her head, he turns it back so that she's looking him right in his mesmerizingly vivid eyes, transfixing her with his impassionate stare.

"I don't, and will never, feel anything but contempt for you." Crane tells her, watching her cry. "But," He adds on, getting her attention again, and enjoys this hold he has over her. "Work for me, and I'll keep you with me."

That nine word promise is all it takes for Angelface to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him. It's a pathetic attempt to show him that even if he hates her, she still cares about him, and it's a way that she can make believe that he cares too. He's not going to love her, but she can pretend.

She moves at a wrong angle and her aching leg finally, finally gives out, and when she drops, Crane goes with her to the floor, as she's got her arms around his neck still. He moves to get up and she hitches her legs on his hips, keeping him down with her, though he's still leaning upwards and supporting himself with his hands on either side of her head.

"Don't leave me," She says, reaching for and taking hold of his Scarecrow mask, pulling his glasses off gently. She sets them on the floor, carefully, and pulls the Scarecrow mask down over his face, adjusting it just so, until she can see his eyes through the raggedly cut holes. "Don't go."

Crane sees no point in sex, but Scarecrow sees an opportunity.

_**Tell her you hate her. Tell her that she disgusts you. Tell her that you're only humoring her.**_

"Am I pretty?" She asks him, earnestly, and it's the one question that he's heard some variant of almost every day since she made her scars bigger, though she's never asked him, not directly. Crane narrows his eyes, slightly, as he shrugs off his suit jacket and pulls at his tie. His free hand covers her mouth, muffling anything else that she might say, because he doesn't want to hear her voice anymore.

"Shut up."


	42. Waits

When she wakes up, he's already dressed and having what looks like a cup of cheap coffee from a café nearby, standing at the window and looking out at the Narrows streets. Angelface sits up, stretches, and wordlessly scoops up her clothes and walks into the bathroom for a shower. She finally, finally washes her hair again, and it's wonderful to walk out of that bathroom with damp but clean hair that smells like that bar of soap left in the shower. She's in the middle of putting the silver rings back into the sides of her long mouth, to hold them shut again, when she scoops up Crane's mask and tosses it to him. It's got to be eight or nine in the morning, judging from the sunlight.

"When are we putting the plan into action?" She asks him, sitting on the edge of the bed and brushing her hair out with her fingers.

"The thirty first." Crane replies, having caught his mask and now setting it aside, safely. He takes another sip of his hot coffee and glances at her, as she ruffles her hair out to look normal, finally getting her steel hoops to fit just right in her mouth so that she won't accidentally bite them and hurt herself. There's a darkening bruise on her cheekbone that he doesn't remember inflicting. Probably just a random act in the cool heat of passionless sex.

"Halloween? Festive." She comments, now examining the huge blood spots on her white dress. She's never going to be able to go outside in this thing, just like Crane can't walk around without trying to disguise exactly who he really is.

"It wasn't my idea." He says back, but has already returned to staring out the window. She doesn't speak back, only stares down at her lap. There's no need for Crane to tell her that they're not a couple and that they're never going to be, how she's just another thug to him, or the fact that the only reason he even bothers to fuck her is because she insists. He's very aware that she's gotten the message loud and clear, especially how after they had finished the night before, he laid on his side of the bed and when she tried to cuddle, he shoved her off the bed and told her she was only his sex toy (though his exact words happened to be a bit more coarse; 'Don't touch me you slut; remember who the boss is here' happened to be the actual statement, but same difference). Of course, that was the ever-eloquent Scarecrow choosing their vocabulary, but it wasn't as if it weren't true, though Crane would have been less coarse about saying so. Crane himself still wanted nothing to do with her, and though he had remained in control on their drunken tryst, last night he decided that he didn't want to put up with it and let Scarecrow have his fun. Misanthropy runs deep, and he doesn't even really enjoy sex anymore, if he ever had. It's too much effort and a waste of time when he could be perfecting his plans and working on other, more important things.

One good thing did come out of it, though. Scarecrow is in a very good mood.

After about ten minutes of digging around the apartment, Angelface finds some old clothes of the last inhabitants (they sure left a lot of their stuff here; she wonders why) and with the help of a scarf is able to disguise herself in a new wardrobe. Crane hands her the rest of the money he has on him, which is only a couple hundred dollars, and tells her to buy them food because everything in the refrigerator is rotten. She comes back jauntily in fifteen minutes with enough foodstuffs to last them for tonight and tomorrow, which is all the time they should plan ahead for, seeing as the day after tomorrow is the good ol' day of Halloween, and the day they rain terror on Gotham. Crane has called Joker and his goons and has started having his secret cache of toxin moved to the appropriate locations, and now all they have to do is wait. The threat of Batman still looms over their heads, and so they can't just run around to kill time.

And so they sit. And they sit. And they wait.

"Crane?" Angelface eventually asks, sprawled on the bed and bored. Crane himself sits at the small table, drinking a cup of mediocre coffee. Angelface hasn't seen him eat one thing the entire time she's been working for him. He glances up at her for a moment, before returning to the crossword puzzle he's been working on for a half hour or so.

"Mm?" It's all the response she gets, but she's happy he acknowledged her at all. She rolls onto her stomach and watches him, playing with the rings in the corner of her mouth.

"You look sick. Are you okay?" She watches, as he glances up at her over the rim of his glasses. She's trying to mother him, of course; Crane has been expecting her to start this. She loves him. She'll, of course, want to protect him and care for him.

He's not having that.

"Fine, Angel." He says, curtly, and fills in another word. Nine letter synonym for infuriating?

"Are you sure?" She asks him, care and worry in his eyes. He's sickened by the love she has for him.

'Angelface', he fills in the nine-letter crossword space.

"You shouldn't be so worried about me," Crane says to her, in cold monotone, "And should be more worried about that bulimia problem you seem to have." Knife to the heart. He sees her pale and her face tighten up, as if she'll cry. He would laugh, if he were any other sort of man.

"I'm not bulimic." She snaps, and he's almost relieved that she's angry with him. Anger he can deal with. Fear he loves. But love itself? He abhors it. A series of chemical reactions that render a perfectly sane human being into a willing slave. He's taking more pleasure in hurting Angelface than he ever would have taken from loving her.

"Mhm? And so you've just had the stomach flu at convenient points in time for the past week, then?" Crane shoots back, scribbling in another word on the crossword. Five letter world for a lover?

Angelface starts crying into her hands, starting out as quiet whimpers that eventually turn into loud sobs. He's made her cry. He'd be happy about that if she would just cry quieter.

'Whore' he scribes into the little white boxes, ignoring the sobbing. He can play her emotions if he likes, making her feel better, or he can just ignore her. She's not getting any quieter, and his thoughts are being scrambled by the noise. His crossword is never going to get done. So he sets down his pen, walks over to her, pries her hands away from her face, and leans in so that their faces are about a half-inch from one another.

"Angelface, I'm giving you one, and _only_ one opportunity. You're going to be very quiet now, you're going to be completely _silent_." Crane says this in a cold tone, but the threat in his voice is still apparent. She's got her eyes wide open and is staring at him, afraid, and that pleases him in some way or another, but not enough to make him give her a break. "If I hear one noise from you, then I'm going to put on that mask and I'm going to do horrible things to you. I will pull off your fingernails, and knock out all your teeth, and then I'm going to let Scarecrow do even worse. Do. You. Understand. Me?" He gives her head a short shake with every word, for emphasis, and she nods without making a noise. Crane lets her go, picks up his mask, and carries it back to his table and coffee to finish his crossword in peace. She makes no noise for the next six hours, just sits on the bed and remains deadly silent as Crane finishes his crossword and then starts on another. His concentration is pure, and he's even able to ignore Angelface's teary stares; longing, plaintive gazes.

By nighttime, he's had a long, relaxing day reading the newspaper, having another glass of coffee, walking around to kill more boredom, and threatening Angelface. She sits on the end of their bed, head in her hands, face hidden, and she cries silently with tears dripping pitifully from her chin and onto her lap. He's in a white button-up shirt, snazzy, and his black suit pants. Even when he's plotting to destroy Gotham City, he's going to dress well while he's doing it. She's in a white top that looks almost like a bikini top, the ends of it tied in a knot over her navel, and wearing daisy dukes. Crane knows he's not going to be able to sleep well if she's just going to sit there and mourn all night.

"Angel," He says, tersely, coming to stand in front of her. If he can placate her enough, she'll go to sleep and so can he. She looks up at him, blue eyes bleary and her face red, eyes puffy, and just stares. "Quit crying. I'm not angry anymore."

She leans forward suddenly, wrapping her arms around his torso and burying her face in his chest, wailing. The force she knocks into him with almost knocks him to the floor; he's not a big man, taller than Angelface but not much bulkier.

"I just want to make you happy!" She shrieks, and Crane tries to push her off of him. Scarecrow is itching to just slap her across the face, over and over again, until he sees blood. Crane is only barely resisting the urge of letting him go ahead and do it.

"Then get off." He orders, but she's not budging, sliding downwards slightly and sobbing into his stomach. Crane knows that there's only one way to fix it and have her happy and willing to help him on Halloween night, and he's going to let Scarecrow do that. He still doesn't want anything to do with her; wants to hurt her and make her cry. He'll have to do that later. He's not the charming one of either half of Jonathan Crane; Scarecrow is the charmer, when he feels like it. It's not Crane that hooks his hands underneath her jaw and ears, a hand on each side of her head, and pulls her to her feet with a painful jerk. She doesn't yelp, because she's used to pain, but closes her eyes and continues whimpering.

"Open your eyes. Look at me." Scarecrow commands, and she does. "Angel, shut up. Quit crying, quit moaning like you think you're going to make me love you. Me or Jonny Crane. Because you won't! I don't love you, he absolutely despises you, and you're lucky either of us even puts up with you." He tells her, and begins petting her face in a mocking imitation of affection. "You're beautiful, did you know that? Even with these." Scarecrow flips her rings, hears them jingle against one another. He's playing her like a violin. Time to cut her strings.

"Baby doll," He coos a pet name, a random one, and sees her eyes warm up when he does, "You're a pretty thing, but that's just it. You're pretty. But that's not what Jonny-Jonny keeps you around for. Ya see, we keep you here to do work. And when you're crying and carrying on like this, we can't do our work, and you can't do your work. Now," He leans in, speaking very softly to her, smiling in a sly, almost seductive sort of way, and when she leans her weight against him, leans up for a kiss, he takes a step back and slaps her across the face, as hard as he can. Crane is the control, Scarecrow is the passion.

"You need to do your fucking work. Be a good baby doll; look pretty, and don't talk unless we talk to you first." He tells her, walking away as she picks herself up off the floor, silently. Scarecrow turns, walks around the room, pacing.

'_**Hey Jonny.'**_

_Yes?_

'_**Think I can have fun tonight? I mean, I'm already riled up, and when you take over again, you'll be riled up too and I know how much you hate that.'**_

_Sex? I'm exhausted already._

'_**Come on! We have tomorrow off, and we're not moving for the plan until nightfall on Halloween. You have all day to laze around and recuperate. Besides, it'll shut her up and make her happy...ish.'**_

…_Fine. Have your fun, but I'm not having any part of it._

'_**Didn't expect you to, Jonny old boy. Not in the mood for a menage a trois.' **_

Scarecrow heads over to the table and pulls on his mask, setting Crane's glasses on the table and turning back to Angelface, already undoing the buttons of his shirt with one hand. "C'mon, Angelface. Crane's not here and you've just got me to spend the night with."

By the time he's pinning her down on the bed, she's already staring blankly at the wall, passionlessly.


	43. Crashes

"So, how's the dress for this evening?" Angelface asks, now attempting, haphazardly, to put on lipstick in front of the mirror. She's having a hard time doing it, seeing as she can't tell her lips from the parted open gouges in her cheeks and can't really guess where to stop with the carmine lipstick.

"Expensive. At least make it look expensive." Crane tells her, standing at her right and fixing his tie. It's a very peculiar feeling to be dressed professionally again. He's wearing a nice black suit, though it was picked up at a thrift store not too far away. It's amazing what people will throw out on account of a tiny little rip in the sleeve, one that Angelface easily fixed with a needle and black thread.

"I think we look expensive enough," She tells him, wiping away the ruby red lipstick and beginning again, for the fifth or so time. She's wearing a curvy white dress, and it looks expensive too. They picked it up at the same place they got his suit. She recently touched up her blond-dyed hair, as her red roots were showing, and now her hair is a vibrant blond again. She'd be beautiful if it weren't for her scars, but she's finished her lipstick, finally, and is in the process of smearing concealer over them to make them less noticeable. They're still very noticeable, but less so than normal. She had to take her silver rings out, to look more presentable and less like a thug.

Looking at Crane in his suit and Angelface in her dress, you'd never guess they were two escaped mental patients planning to bring the greatest city in the world to its knees.

They're getting ready for a party, and an important one. A Halloween costume party that they've had to arrange, arduously, to get invitations for. All in the plan.

"Are we ready?" She asks him, messing with her hair, trying to make it perfect as it tumbles down her shoulders and back. He nods, slightly and almost jerkily, picking up their case. You can't very well walk into a ritzy party in your costume, can you? They'll change once they get there, like everyone else will. The two of them walk out of the shitty Narrows apartment they've been squatting in, and make their way to the equally expensive-looking car waiting out front.

"Joker's being pretty thorough in keeping up appearances," Angelface notes, sliding in back, and Crane sits down a moment later, putting the bag with their costumes down into the floorboards and giving the driver a slight nod.

"Why wouldn't he be? Our part of the plan is important enough, and we have to look like we're legitimate." He pulls off his glasses and polishes the lenses with a cleaning cloth, before putting them back on and examining the passing streetlamp to see if there are any streaks. There are. He pulls off his glasses, sighing in frustration, and begins the arduous task of trying to polish his lenses to perfection. They're going to a ritzy party, and they have to look like they're supposed to be going to this ritzy party.

The drive to the Wayne manor isn't that long. And when they pull up in front of the building, though there's a fifteen to twenty minute wait as they inch forward in the line of other cars. When they do eventually get out, Crane walks around and opens the door for her, she shivers in the chill October night air, and he gives her his coat, just as rehearsed. They walk side-by-side up to the door, though an attentive person would note that they're not touching, and stop at the two men watching the door.

"Invitations?" One asks, and Crane produces two, one for him and one for Angelface. "Alright, Mr. and Mrs.…Bateman?" He gives a glance up at them, and neither Crane nor Angelface falter at his stare. "Anyway, we need to search the bag. Safety procedures."

"Of course," Crane hands them the bag, and they open it up and search, finding nothing incriminating in it. No guns, no knives, no little metal canisters filled with mystery liquid and/or gas; just a perfume bottle, a mask, a dress, unimportant and mundane things. "Wouldn't want to compromise our safety."

The bouncer-type man closes the bag and hands it back to Crane, clearing the way for the door. "It looks fine. Enjoy the party."

They nod and walk in, sliding around servers and party guests now staring at the two of them, though none of the bluebloods seem to recognize Crane (as he assumed they wouldn't) or his blond company, though they see the scars instantly and whispering starts up. To Crane it's annoying. To Angelface? Nostalgia. She hasn't been to a ritzy party in at least a year, maybe two; time just slips right past her nowadays. And the last party she was at ended with a kidnapping.

"Never thought I'd get into a Wayne party without Nathan close by or a rich boyfriend on my arm," She tells Crane in a quiet voice barely above a whisper, and he makes a noise in his throat that she can't decipher as either affirmative or annoyed that she's making useless chatter. Either way, it sounds nonplussed. They mingle, not too well seeing as Crane's a misanthropic recluse and Angelface is a psychotic with a Chelsea smile from ear to ear, but they do try. At five 'til midnight, Bruce Wayne himself addresses the crowd of partygoers and invites them to get into costume for the midnight events, and Crane slips away with Angelface down a hallway as other guests crowd in the bathroom(s), until they find what looks like a closet of some sort. It's a very large closet.

"Let's get ready," He tells her, unclipping their case and opening it quickly, as they have about five minutes to dress and get back out there. He pulls on his Scarecrow mask at about the same time as Angelface slips out of her nice white dress and into the girlish white one splotched with her blood and covered in tears and gouges where she was cut or shot, and she smears her carefully-applied lipstick with her thumb, until it's in the same Joker smile that got her into this entire long mess in the first place, that long ago night in the penthouse party. As a final touch, she rubs some of the scarlet onto her cheekbones in a small red oval, to make artificial blush spots that would be sort of cute if she didn't look so detached from reality. Her hair is pulled out of the delicate pins that make her look like a movie star and she musses it up to make it wild again. As a last touch, she kicks off her heels and goes barefoot.

She's no longer Michelle or Julia or any other name that was on her invitation, and he's no longer Crane; they're Angelface and Scarecrow, and they've got two minutes to get into position before the real party starts. Crane pulls the top off of her perfume bottle and pours the liquid into a small metal canister, closes the canister tight while tossing the bottle aside, and shakes it up for a few seconds before hiding it up his sleeve. The two of them walk out of the closet like a psychotic James Bond with a Glasgow Bond girl on his arm.

Scarecrow slips away as Angelface walks into the party again, bloodstained dress and new makeup garnering great amounts of attention, and it's not too long before people approach her as she stands in the corner of the room, sipping wine.

"Hello, dear," A rich woman says, blond hair pulled up and pinned behind to her skull, and watches Angelface closely. "What a lovely…costume you have there. And…realistic, too."

"Yes, very…realistic." Her boyfriend, husband, beau, whatever comments, as her friend nods from behind her back.

"Very. How did you make…those look so real?" She gestures to Angelface's bloodstains on her dress, and Angelface smiles, too wide.

"You know, this and that. I'm glad they look so realistic." She takes a drink of wine, knowing that they're avoiding the obvious topic and question that they want to ask, and when the woman finally points at her face and asks, 'how did you get those, dear? They _are_ fake, right?' Angelface laughs, a noise that starts out harmless and eventually gains a slight tone of hysteria to it. Wine runs out of the slits in her cheeks.

"Nope." She tells them, right as the clock hits midnight.

"Happy Halloween, ladies and gentlemen!" A coarse, mad and highly familiar voice calls out from the doorway, as all the guests turn and gasp. Someone screams. Angelface's heart skips a beat, from what she insists to herself is terror or surprise, when Public Enemy Number One walks in with Harley Quinn at his right, toting what looks like a tommygun. He mock bows to everyone in the room, as Scarecrow steps into view, holding what looks like a detonator of some sort, thumb poised on a button. The Joker beams at the entire horrified room, including the suitably excited Angelface, and when he speaks again, it's in a tone that suggests dark things for the night ahead.

"Why wasn't I invited to this ritzy party?"


	44. Masquerades

Well, the party has come to a screeching halt. Literally.

Angelface has gotten a hold of weaponry by now, mainly a handgun given to her by one of Scarecrow's thugs that have walked in with the Joker's thugs, and now she's just watching what happens. Scarecrow is nowhere to be seen. She's not afraid of the purple-coated man now casually strolling through the crowd, though the ironic similarity to her very first capture does not evade her, is only aware of the danger he represents, the damage he's capable of. Equally dangerous is the femme fatale trotting by his side, Harley Quinn, tommygun in hand and ready to be fired, unflinchingly, at a moment's notice. While the deadly duo make their tour of the room, not shy to indulge themselves in the buffet a small bit (which is understandable, as Angelface knows the lifestyle is sparse in the way of good, filling meals), terrorizing the guests, Angelface herself remains still, unflinching, unmoving, impassive to the very moment he spots her in her out-of-place girlish white dress stained with red blooms of bloodstains.

"Angel," He chimes, and she's mildly surprised that he remembered her villain name, "The city's been no good to you." There really isn't much interest for her in his stare, as she's mainly just the current thing to delay his attention with. Scarecrow is no doubt frustrated in the leisurely manner Joker works in, but will undoubtedly never say a word about it to him. Harley's glare is unmistakable, but she won't say a word either about her jealousy. Angelface just twitches her head, slightly, blond hair sliding down and over her shoulder, out of her eyes, and her stare remains as impassive as ever.

"It's no good to anyone," She states, in a dread monotone. "Not me, or you, or any of these poor bastards."

Joker stares only a second more before letting out a bark of a laugh, turning on his heel and sliding into another stalk towards his next target in the crowd, another person to harangue. "I know _that_ already."

Harley gives her a glance, sizing her up, before her eyes roll and lock onto some movement nearby. She turns, narrows her eyes, and lets off a blast from her gun. A guest falls, phone in hand, to drown in a puddle of his own blood while his children scream and so does his wife. "No phones!" Quinn shrieks, in her distinctive accent that sounds vaguely like Brooklyn or Chicago. "Anybody pulls out a phone, and somebody's gettin' hurt. Mr. J's orders." She looks back at Joker, adoration in her eyes, and he smiles and wags his finger over his shoulder, in her line of view.

"Right, right. We don't want the PD to ruin our fun, do we?" He sweeps his arms out wide, turning to survey the deadly silent crowd. When nobody answers, out of unease whether the question is rhetorical or not, he clicks his tongue, seizes a random guest, and jerks the young woman drenched in jewels (she looks straight out of a Calvin Klein advertisement, as everyone else in the party does) face-to-face. "How about you?" He asks her, smiling, and she turns a color paler than white. "You're having fun, aren't you?" When she doesn't answer, he gives her a light slap on the cheek, and a shake by the jaw. "Well, aren't you??"

"Yes," She croaks, and Joker roughly throws her back into the crowd without a care. She trips on her heels and falls, smacks her head into a buffet table, and collapses to the floor, unconscious, bleeding from the head. As her beau panics, cries her name while kneeling down to tend to her, Joker shrugs slightly, frowns only a little, and says, "Oops." Soon after, he's forgotten all about the wounded woman and is busy narrating to the entire group of guests, as theatrically as usual. Angelface is alone with her 9 millimeter, listening to him.

"Now, we're going to play a game," He starts, enthusiastically enough, and Angelface rolls her eyes. How did she guess that it was going to be a macabre game of horrors? "This game is called, 'Anybody pulls out a phone and they get a bullet in the head". We're already playing, aren't we Harley?" He doesn't look at his female accomplice, and as she opens her mouth with a smile to answer him, he cuts her off without interest or care in what she would say. He already knows what she'd say. "That's right! Everyone here is playing "Anybody pulls out a phone and they get a bullet in the head" with Harley. So nobody pull out a phone or they lose the game."

Here, Harley fires off a shot into the ceiling for dramatic effect, almost as if it were planned that way. The captives jump. Someone is crying, somewhere. Joker turns again, with his heavy coat swirling in an arc after him, and begins pacing.

"Second game, on this magical Halloween night," The main colors of the hall are orange and black, and he snatches a balloon from the air as he walks by it, "Is going to be a luck-based game. Here are the rules." He shoves the balloon in a random person's hands, and they freeze in terror, though hold the balloon as wordlessly instructed. "One, I'm going to ask a question to anybody I feel like. If they get it wrong, then I pop a balloon." He takes the young woman's hands on either side of the balloon, leaning his chin over her shoulder with his arms around hers on either side, and she looks like she's about to vomit from terror. Angelface dimly notes that she could have easily been in a similar situation at any point in time during her own very first capture; there's no doubt in Angelface's mind of what this woman's fate is going to be. She can tell from the look in the Joker's eye; a sharp glint, a glitter of homicidal glee.

"Two," Joker's hands cover the woman's, and begin to push. "The balloons have a chance of either being normal, or…" He slams her hands together, and her long, manicured nails pop the balloon. She jumps, he leans back, but after a moment, they both realize that the balloon is filled with nothing but breathing air. Joker huffs, mutters under his breath, grabs another random balloon, holds it in the woman's face and pops it himself. This time, thick white smog pours out of it, and the woman goes hacking and coughing. The clownish ghoul steps back as her coughs, urgent and breathless, turn into hysterical laughter. The guests, and Angelface herself, are confused by this turn of events, but only for a moment; the woman jerks her head up and though her face is twisted in a grin, it's agonized and she claws at her throat wildly. The laughter is choked, loud and forced HA HA HAs, and she falls to her knees a moment later, laughing and suffocating at the same time. She is apparently alone; no family members or husbands or dates come to her side, as she curls up in the fetal position on the floor, choking, wheezing, laughing. Eventually, she goes completely rigid, digs her French tips into her throat, and claws it out, before stiffening and dying. Someone screams. Harley shoots into the crowd again, twice, and there are two heavy sounds of bodies colliding like bags of sand with the polished floors.

"A special laughing gas," Joker continues, stepping over the woman's body as if it were some everyday obstacle, and to him, it probably is. "Whose creation can be owed to the good Dr. Crane." After a moment, he thinks, and then adds, "Oh, _sorry_. Scarecrow."

There is a sound that echoes from far away in the large, empty hall, and it sounds like annoyed tsking. Angelface glances around to try and find him, but Crane is invisible. Her attention diverts to Joker once again, as he continues narrating his game.

"And those are the rules! So, who wants to go first?" He glances around, expectantly, but no hands come up, nobody steps forward. Unperturbed, he adds in, "No takers? Oh come on, you killjoys; it's not like we're playing _Russian roulette _or anything!" Still, no hands come up, and he has to seize a random man by the collar and drag him out, grab a balloon, and shove it in his hands. "Alright, lucky contestant number one! Let's see…what's my favorite color?"

The man glances back at the expectant Joker, looks him over, looks back to the horridly inconspicuous deathtrap in his hands. "Erm…purple?"

His hands are clapped together, the balloon pops, and the acrid smoke poisons and claims the second victim for the night. Horror is etched into every face, barring four. Another random contestant is chosen, an older gentleman.

"How many people do you think I've killed?" Joker questions, and the old man steels himself, looks from the orange balloon in his hands, and says, "I don't know." Joker pulls the balloon out of his hands, lets it float up to the ceiling, and after clapping his hands and being tossed a shotgun, shoots it as it floats to the ceiling. The balloon pops; no smoke. "Right! None of you do, and none of you will!" Joker smiles, grotesquely, at the man, and then lays the barrel of the shotgun against his shoulder like a marching soldier while he peruses the other guests. Another is snatched, at random, and given a balloon to hold.

"You look suitably grave and joyless. How about a round?" He asks the young man, who was standing with and had abandoned the woman that died earlier on from the Joker's gas, and Angelface can't believe her eyes.

"James?" She asks, aloud, and Joker notices this, stares at the young man, and by God, he laughs. Laughs and laughs and laughs, guiding James Thompson over towards Angelface, which is obviously not what he wants to do. Joker shoves him anyway, until he's standing in front of Angelface.

"Now I know why you looked familiar!" Joker laughs, clapping James on the back. "You and Michelle here have a lot of catching-up to do, don't you?" James glances at Angelface in that moment, confusion on his face, and when he realizes what's happened, he can't stare at her and looks at the floor, at the wall, anywhere but at her. She sees the disgust, and in some way, it hurts her. Not very much, of course; James Thompson is a weasel no matter how one looks at it. But still, it kinda stings. A moment of silence passes before Joker says, still giggling, "Well, that was lively! Anywho, back to business." James is shoved away from the crowd and into the center of the room, the ring the guests have unconsciously made for the Joker to move about in, and then the mad clown himself is circling James, like a hyena ready to pounce on wounded prey and crack its skull open between its jaws. "Okay," Joker says, darting like a mako shark into James' line of view, "I'm thinking of a number between one and 'fuck you'. What is it?"

James stares for a moment, in utter despair, before answering, "Fuck you?"

His hands are clapped together and white smoke pours out of the balloons, and though he doesn't start laughing, he starts screaming in terror. The smoke is thinner, almost more powdery than the laughing smoke, and James curls into a ball, screaming. Undoubtedly a balloon filled only with fear toxin instead of the deadly Joker derivative. Joker glares down at him, tapping the side of his own head with the shotgun without care. "Smartass." He gives the young man a kick in the ribs and then walks off, just in time to see a shadowy figure zip down from the support beams and envelop Harley, dragging her up, screaming, firing her gun, into the shadows of the high ceiling. A second or two after seeing her disappear, the legendary vigilante drops in himself, leaving Harley hanging upside down from one of the beams, tied by her foot, screaming insults at him, and pleading with Joker. He ignores her completely, all his attention focused on his favorite nemesis.

"Batsy, you're _late_!" Joker chimes, and when Angelface sees Batman approach, stalking, dangerous, Joker produces a detonator and the vigilante hesitates. "Not too late to play the game, though. Here are _your_ rules. Twitch a muscle, bat an eye," He says the awful pun with a bit of a laugh in his voice, and Angelface rolls her eyes, "And gas bombs planted all around Gotham go off. Gordon already knows, and that's why we don't have about a half million police officers trying to play our game too." Angelface stares between Joker and Batman, her head turning from left to right, as if she were watching a tennis match. She waits for one to make a move; Joker is waiting for Batman's move, and the crowd is anxious as well. After a moment, Batman does the unexpected; he grabs a plate, flings it like a throwing saucer at Joker, whose attention is distracted long enough for Batman to duck in and tackle him. Joker throws his weight, and throws Batman off of him and into a buffet table while rolling onto his feet, laughing.

"How'd you call my bluff? Do I have a tell, or do you just know me that well?" He asks, laughing, as Batman tosses something at him again. A very familiar burlap mask. "Oh, you caught Jonny-Jonny. Disappointing, but I can't say I didn't _expect_ it." Batman lashes out, and he and Joker tangle while the guests try not to get in the crossfire, and Angelface is left to watch in awe. The fight is brutal, vicious; Joker fights dirty, and Batman has serious skills. Without thinking, she grabs a knife off of a table and aims, throwing it at Batman's back. It bounces off harmlessly, but distracts him enough for Joker to lash out with a particularly brutal slash where he knows from experience that the armor plates in the suit separate, and kicks Batman away from him. The two of them know that at any moment they could accidentally pop one of the many, many balloons hanging over their heads or bloated and heavy at their feet, and though Batman seems to be taking care to try and avoid them, Joker sure isn't. Batman might even be trying to guide Joker out of the way of the balloons, for the safety of the guests, but it's compromising his fighting power and Joker's getting an edge.

"Crane detonated the bombs," Batman growls, in the particular tone that suggests he gargles with razorblades and nails, "And Gordon found them out. Marzipan and kittens." He tries to distract Joker with conversation, and Joker laughs, diving forward for another ragged slash at the exposed portion of his combatant's face. It misses by millimeters.

"You know me," He pants, though not unexcitedly, "I just love bringing Gotham things to _smile_ about!" A moment later, he does land a slash on Batman's lower face and while he's distracted, kicks him into an expensive-looking glass table. He then turns and runs, dodging through the main party room and into adjoining rooms of Wayne Manor, stopping to briefly aim, closing one eye as he does, at Harley in her rope bindings. She screams at him in terror, and he fires his shotgun at her. It misses by inches, and the rope tied to one of the rafter beams is severed. Harley plummets to the ground, landing on a buffet table. She, drenched in punch and smeared with some sort of confectionary, what might be cake of some sort, whines and then moves to her feet, staggering after Joker as he runs into the next room while telling her to hurry up or he'll leave her to Batman. Angelface, for lack of anywhere else to go, sees Batman rouse and stare at the only occupant left in the room; her. He lunges, she turns and runs, barefoot, through the mansion after Joker, dodging into the same room.

Angelface knows that Crane is tied up somewhere and probably being shipped off to Arkham at this moment, so she's going to try and save him later on. She 's also aware that there's a very high chance that Batman will catch her soon, through those weird sneaky tricks of his (she inwardly wonders if he's some sort of marsupial ninja) or some environmental hazard. She doesn't want to go back to Arkham; Arkham is a place of horror for her, of dark hallways and hallucinations and various things she doesn't want to think of. She'll chase Joker down, join up with him again, hide out. That's what she'll do.

Angelface turns a corner into another room and stares right at Joker, holding up a can of what looks like aerosol spray cleaner, and a match. She stares, for that brief moment, with an innocently surprised expression on her face, unable to comprehend, it would seem. And she knows that he knows who she is when he pushes down the button on the can and sprays fire right in her face.

She screams in agony, and staggers back with her hands, brought up to protect her face, burnt, and her face itself subjected to the full blast. Joker tosses aside his poor boy flamethrower and leans down to give her a glance-over, smiles, and says, "Ooh, tough luck there, Schwarzy. Funny, your old costume had some Rorschach ink blots on it, and a trick of his is what took you out. Played you like a violin and then cut your strings, huh honey?" He laughs after that, and then dashes towards a window in back with Harley, making his escape. By now, Batman has taken the time to take out all the armed thugs and let the guests escape, and stops in time to see Angelface. She sees him glance at her, step over her, and then go after Joker and Quinn, while SWAT rushes in and finds her condition. Vaguely, before she blacks out, she hears someone call for a medic.


	45. Goodnights

There is muffled noise, and the smell of antiseptic.

When Angelface opens her eyes, she is startled to see blank white, and nothing but. She panics. Sitting up straight, or at least attempting to, she finds that her wrists are bound to the bed railings; her left by handcuffs, her right, which is her dominant hand, by tight cloth bindings to make the entire hand unusable. She can't see this though, can't see anything, and thrashes, jerks, tries to free herself. There is commotion, the noise muffled by whatever is wrapped around her head; the noise of people running in, hurrying, hands gripping her shoulders and pinning her down against what she realizes is a bed, and what she guesses is a hospital bed.  
"Hold her down, dammit!" Someone shouts on her left side, and the various hands holding her down tighten their grip. "Get a nurse in here!"  
A prick in the inside of her left elbow distracts her for a moment, and after a minute or two of more thrashing, her movements become sluggish, weak. The world goes from stark white to pitch black again.

The next time she wakes up, Angelface can see out of her left eye. She blinks it, sits up in her bed as much as possible, and surveys the room. It's a hospital room, and it reeks of antiseptic. The walls, the sheets, everything is stark white, and the intensity of the color is almost sickening. She glances to each hand, and sees that the left is indeed bound by a handcuff. The right is a cloth binding, what looks like a rag, preventing even more movement than the handcuff. She then, panicking, tries to look for a reflective surface and see what's on her head. It's restricting and smells horrible, and her right eye is still covered in white cloth and she can't see anything out of it. To her dismay, there's nothing reflective to see into, almost as if they've removed it all beforehand. This makes her panic even further.

The door opens now, as a nurse walks in and examines the room to see if it needs cleaning. She then looks at Angelface, her expression tightening in either distaste or through her examinations. "You're awake. Must be getting tolerant to the knockout drugs." She meanders closer, peering at the bedridden woman more closely. The nurse is relatively young, maybe late twenties, early thirties, curly brunette hair and a pretty face. "I'll have to let them know."  
Angelface blinks her eye, tries to speak only to realize that her mouth is stuffed with something. She thinks it might be cotton. The nurse smirks. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" She asks, snidely, and Angelface mumbles a muffled insult before thudding back against her hospital bed, defeated.  
"Yeah, I thought so," The nurse begins to wipe down various surfaces in the room, while Angelface notices that there's what looks like a feeding tube stuck in her side. What's wrong with her that she can't eat? Do the police think she's too dangerous to feed? No, her hands are bound; what can she do, spit it back at them? No, there's something else going on here, something is wrong. The nurse pumps in a disgusting-looking slop through the tube, and leaves Angelface's room wordlessly, leaving the villain lost in a haze of confusion as well.  
Over the next week or so, doctors explain what's happened to her. Well, doctor; the surgeon that took care of her case, a man by the name of Thomas Elliot. She remembers the last thing before passing out, and she remembers it damn well; Joker, with a poor boy flamethrower, trying to kill her. Elliot sits at the end of her bed, explaining what's happened to her.  
"Basically," He explains, reading off her chart, "You suffered massive burns to the facial area; the chemical used to light the fire seemed to spray into your face a moment before it hit the match, which ignited and burned while the new flames were being added." He hesitates, seems to be deliberating whether to tell her something else or not, but she watches him with her one good eye, expectantly. He finally does begin again, a sigh in his voice. "The burns were...massive, as I've said. We did what we could, but as you've probably guessed, the damage was extreme and there will be...scarring."  
Elliot shows her a mirror, and Angelface sees that her entire head is wrapped in clean white bandages. She knows this, of course, as the nurses have had to wrap and re-wrap her head before, but she sees nothing but her own wide left eye, and it's almost terrifying to see this damage actually cemented.  
"On release from the hospital, you'll be transported back to the Arkham facility." He informs her, putting down the mirror. He leaves the room, and Angelface sulks. She's terrified of what she looks like now; it's enveloped her entire world, all her worries. 'What do I look like?' 'How monstrous am I now?'

* * *

Over the time she spends in the hospital, she picks up info that the Joker and Harley Quinn were both caught (By Batman) and sent back to Arkham. Crane was sent back in a straightjacket. She's sad that he's not here with her, and she misses him very much, and for the first time, wonders why. It's obvious that he despises her (he's told her as much), and she's just a pawn. So does she even love him, or is it the automatic Stockholm she gets with anybody that'll put up with her? She knows it's probably the second one. And then she wonders if he'll be happy to see her when she gets back to Arkham.  
After an indescriminate amount of time recouping from injuries she's terrified of knowing the full extent of, Dr. Elliot decides that it's time for her to see the damage and become accustomed to it. They've taken out the feeding tube by now and she eats normally, though has to be fed (her hands are still tied down). The good doctor walks in, and a nurse unwraps her bandages while Elliot holds her mirror, face-down so she can't see her reflection until he chooses so, talking to her calmly.  
"Ms. King, I'm going to show you your reflection now. Be aware that the damage is..." he hesitates, tries to find the right word, "Extensive. But," He adds in, quickly, as Angelface watches the white cotton wrap swirl in and out of her line of vision, again and again and again, feels the cool air against raw skin, "There are always treatments we can take to lessen the damage. Cosmetic surgery is a possibility, and scarring can always be minimized."  
Dr. Elliot pulls the mirror up as the last strip of bandage is pulled away from her face, and Angelface stares into her reflection in a blank, almost dreamlike state. This goes on for about three seconds, in which Elliot almost thinks that she's fine with it.  
And then she starts screaming.  
For one, her hair is gone; all except for a few wispy blond strands hanging from her flaking, blackened scalp. Her left eye is wide, as wide as it will go, and brilliant green as always; her right eye is white and cloudy, milky, like a dead fish's, and the eyelid is gone. The skin of her face is the exact visible composition and color of cooked hamburger, with the ends of her mouth twisted up in the scarred smile, now even more grotesque than before, as it displays the flame-blackened teeth and half-gone lips. Her head has been cooked, her beauty is completely gone.  
She screams and screams, until they have to pin her down and pump her full of sedatives. She goes out like a light, and Dr. Elliot sighs, waves the staff out the door, and leaves.

* * *

The next morning, Dr. Elliot opens the door to Angelface's room, looks in at her bed, and then shouts for security. The bed is empty; the cloth tie on the right bed railing is limp, loosened to the point of being able to be pulled out of. The handcuffs are still shut as tight as they go, and there's blood dripping from them. Three rolls of bandages are gone, and the window is open, the morning breeze blowing through lazily.

* * *

Gotham has one more supervillain stalking the streets. A thin form walks through the shadows, wiping its gloved hands off on a rag before tossing the bloody rag into the nearby trashcan. A body lies crumpled in the dumpster at the alley's back, a hand hanging limply out of the dumpster's edge, blood dripping in a steady pattern from the body's fingertips. The thin figure sees a cop car stop at the mouth of the alley, a cop already getting out and aiming a flashlight her way, and she jumps on a trashcan and over to a fire escape hanging around five or six feet off the ground. She clambers up it, onto a Narrows rooftop, and is quick to dash from one rooftop and leap over to another, continuing on this pattern until she's far enough away to relax. Her head, wrapped tightly in bandages to hide her grotesque appearance, turns to look over at Gotham's expanse, one lurid green eye glittering in the low light of the city. Her mouth opens, and the polluted breeze blows onto her tongue, bitter and thick and icy cold. She looks out at the expanse and sighs, hot breath trailing away from her open mouth in a white smoky cloud, disappearing high above her.  
"This city is sick," She murmurs, pulling her coat tighter around her. "Breeds lunatics like bluebloods breed racehorses." A moment passes in thick, complete silence, and she laughs under her breath. It's been a month since she slipped out of the hospital, disappeared into thin air. She had to break her thumb to get out of the handcuffs, and the hand is still weak enough to prove that she did. They say that there's someone else running around Gotham with his head wrapped in bandages, some lunatic by the name Hush. She's almost wishing that she meets him sometime; they might have coffee, have a chat. She looks at her wrist, mind you that it has no watch, and curses under her breath.  
"Late." She jumps down off of the roof and turns, extending her good hand and catching a window ledge. Pulling herself up into the window, she brushes her coat off (which does no good, seeing as the brown coat is stained, soaked in nameless liquids leaving huge dark blotches all over the fabric), and turns her head to get a look at the figure leaned, very casually, in a dirty recliner.

"You're late," The man states in a crisp tone, standing. His suit is a dingy, dark green. He has a cane, and leans on it as he watches her huff under her breath and walk forward. She's sure that he's only using it for show.  
"Things to take care of," She tells him, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him closely with her one good eye. The man closes his eyes, smiles in a simpering sort of way, waves his hand in an arc from his left side to his right, as if dispelling her worries.  
"A madman and a madwoman get together to chat. What do they talk about?" He asks her, enigmatically, as she stands there with her arms crossed, staring holes through him. The bulkiness of her coat makes her frame manly instead of feminine. After a moment, she gives up on his riddle.  
"I give. What do they talk about?" She asks him, tersely. The man laughs, derisively, mocking her intelligence. He waves his cane at her and says the next line pointedly, a wry smile on his face.  
"Business." The word comes in a puff of air, warm smoke that drifts upwards and disappears at the ceiling. She rolls her eyes and he laughs under his breath, just as mockingly, before pushing up the brim of his hat and staring at her. "So, I assume you've come to finalize our deal?" He queries, and she gives a terse nod.  
"Of course. I wouldn't have come if I didn't want to."  
"Good!" He chirps, making his way up to her, and offers her his hand. She hesitates a moment, looks between him and his hand, before grasping it firmly and shaking. "Pleasure, Schwarzwald. We'll be discussing our plans soon."  
"Yourself," Schwarzwald answers, and though her voice is coarse and her mannerisms have lost their gentle edge, her lurid green eye glitters with a certain joy that she won't let on, that hearkens to a more innocent age. "Riddler."

Gotham City breeds two more lunatics. Just two more, in millions. And those two lunatics sit down at the filthy kitchen table, and they plot to bring the city to its knees.


	46. Epilogues

**((Well, we're finally at the end. Enjoy, you guys.))**

* * *

Gotham City is almost alive tonight.

Recent times have been...eventful. For one, there was a major break at Arkham, Gotham's great cardboard prison. The blame lands squarely on the shoulders of a criminal calling herself Schwarzwald, though an up-and-coming new criminal, the Riddler, was given most of the actual credit in masterminding the plot. Predictably, the Joker is gone again, as is his girlfriend of sorts, Harley Quinn. The Batman is seen around the city constantly, mainly to foil small bank robberies or jobs by the small-time criminals dreaming to be as big as the huge names in the city's criminal element. The aptly-monikered 'supervillains'.

Right now, there's a supervillain meeting going on, as cliche as that sounds. By 'meeting', meaning 'everybody who feels like it gets together and decides if they want to try and work together to make Batman their bitch'. The Iceberg Lounge is bustling with either criminals, _really bad_ criminals, or people either daredevils, terrified, or piss drunk.

"If you were to ask me," The Riddler begins exuberantly, in a tone that practically drips with superiority, "Then I say we don't need to even consider working together. One, I doubt you would be able to comprehend the more intricate details of my plot, and two, you've never really wanted him dead anyway." He's wearing his trademark suit, green with question marks all over it, basically as gaudy as possible. Along with the cane and the hat, he basically looks like some dandy gentleman that wandered into the wrong city. He sits at a table, one leg crossed over the other, a scotch on the rocks sitting by his left hand, on the table.

"There's a problem with your logic, Riddles," the man sitting on the other side of the table pops off, nonchalantly. Nashton's expression darkens considerably at the nickname, as the Joker leans back in his seat as far as possible, his head, his neck craning over the back of the chair. He looks at Harley, who isn't wearing her harlequin costume and is instead wearing a tube top, a skirt, heels, and a black jacket over it, her blonde hair pulled back into pigtails that betray her innate girlish nature, and says, "Brown liquor. I'm in the mood for brown liquor." She walks away, clicking with every step, and comes back with a bottle, handing it to Joker. Fiddling with the bottle, he takes his time in seeing exactly how long he can make Riddler wait before the fellow criminal snaps and finally says something. He'll have to wait anyway, as the Joker's attention is fully focused on the bottle of liquor that refuses to be opened. After about a minute of fussing with it, he just smashes the neck of the bottle on the edge of the table and drinks from that, unperturbed by the sharp edges. "The problem is, I never _asked_ you for help. I just noticed that you're doing pretty well on your own. Don't be so..." He trails off, hunting for the correct word with an overdone, almost comical thinking expression, before he smiles and gently waves the broken neck of the bottle in the Riddler's direction. "self-assured. Sure, _you _think you're the smartest thing since Luthor, but even _he's_ got a guy in spandex knocking him back down to size."

"Your comparative skills are simply_ superb_," Riddler comments, tersely, while he watches Joker completely ignore Harley as she sits on his leg, circling her arms around his neck, "But our hero in spandex is merely a different shade of insane." The words _than you_ go unsaid, but the message he communicates is loud and clear. "He's a man dressing up in theatric fashion and jumping from rooftop to rooftop, swearing he can change the city. He's mad. Anyone with moderate intelligence can outwit a madman." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigar, putting the end in between his lips and tipping his head back. Schwarzwald, ever silent, wordlessly lights it for him. She notices that Joker's staring at her, as if mirthful and amused at seeing her serving Nashton like a doting wife. She looks at him blankly, and he can't tell if the thing behind her eyes is disinterest or pure, cold, controlled rage. She moves back a step as Riddler puffs on his cigar, an apathetic expression on his face, as tendrils of smoke curl and disappear into the low haze, not enough to be sickening but enough to set the atmosphere, hanging over their heads. "The 'World's Greatest Detective' is nothing but a child unto someone like myself."

Schwarzwald nurses a Stolichnaya (flavor Blakberi) and watches the Lounge's patrons apathetically; with every sip, her fire-blackened teeth are visible, due to a lack of lips. She doesn't wear bandages anymore; that's Hush's gig. Instead, she's wearing a leather helmet with an orange-tinted glass window to see out of. Her face is still hidden, and she can see clearly. The helmet is tipped back enough for her to take her Stoli easily. Riddler and Joker sit at the table in front of her, Harley Quinn having left by now due to a lack of interest in her presence, while a new up-and-coming environmental terrorist by the name of Isley sits alone in back. Soon, she is joined by Harley, and the two begin to chat amicably. Pamela Isley, apparently in possession of a certain strain of genetically-engineered plants that release deadly toxic spores. She's been discreetly planting them around Gotham and is planning to try and destroy the city and all its inhabitants when all the plants mature and she can cause them to release their spores with a particular pheromone she'll release during a planned breezy day.

Everyone in the Lounge, Joker included, knows that she's going to do this. But nobody here will do a thing except try to plan in a way that will leave them out of the firing range. Because it's not their problem.

Jonathan Crane, sprung from Arkham at the same point as Joker, is in back and all alone. His plans are unrevealed, if he has any at all, but it's quite assured that he's going to need help and isn't going to be using the Joker's assistance this time. After more quiet talking, the Riddler gets up and walks to sit with Crane, probably to match wits. Crane looks unamused at Nashton's arrival, but tolerant enough. Schwarzwald hasn't spoken with him since she was Angelface, and has decided that it's for the better this way; her self-esteem is gone, and she's accepted that she's not beautiful enough anymore, that she's no longer the pretty...ish...girl with little more effectiveness than as a human shield, if the situation were to call for such a use of her. Over the time since her disfigurement, she's been bulking up, getting more muscle; now she's able to handle herself in a good bit of dirty twenty-to-one, which is really needed if you're going to be a hired thug-slash-bodyguard-slash-worker. She's been working with the Riddler as all three of those things, and mainly does the physical work while Riddler does the planning. This is rather dangerous, mainly since all the 'riddles' are deathtraps, but she's been able to handle herself so far. He thinks up the riddles/deathtraps, she does the physical work of putting them all together, plus acting as a working bodyguard.

She's not worshiping him, like she did with the Joker and with Crane. He's the employer and she's the hired hand, though the employer is an insufferable genius with a complex and the worker is a mainly silent disfigured freak with the patience of a saint and the rare ability to spend five minutes in his presence without trying to strangle him. They've slept together only once, and that was mainly out of curiosity to see if they wanted to have that sort of relationship: a boss/worker compatibility with the occasional encounter to relieve frustration on both parts. His superiority complex and need to control everything he can matched with her disfigurement, which is rather grotesque, and sensitivity about the subject aren't worth the frustration, however, and they've decided that it's not worth it to keep trying.

There's a low whistle that gets her attention, and she looks over at the table in front of her. Joker is waving her over, with what looks like a genuine smile on his face.

Schwarzwald doesn't trust him.

She does, however, sit down with an offhand glance to the Riddler, who's apparently bantering with Crane over something intense, before Joker gets her attention again.

"So, No-Face," He starts with a cruel nickname that Schwarzwald is praying to God doesn't stick among her criminal colleagues, "you've gotta tell me this, because I'm just _dying_ to know: how do you deal with him twenty-four seven?" He gestures to Nashton with a small wave of his broken bottle, Schwarzwald setting aside her empty glass and waving over at a passing patron. They ask her what she wants, mainly because she's a little famous for being the Riddler's muscle, and they come back with a bottle of Smirnoff. Giving an appreciative nod as she takes it, opening the bottle and drinking straight from it (with difficulty, due to the helmet).

"Easy. Keep my mouth shut and nod whenever he talks." Her answer is brusque, more of a gravelly grunt than anything else, and she takes another swig while Joker laughs, and though it's slightly quieter than his worst laughs, it's still loud enough to garner at the very least the passing attentions of every patron in the bar.

"Oh, is it _that_ easy? Wow, I never would've guessed." There is a moment of silence between them, and it's not completely unpleasant, either; mainly because silence with the Joker is a rare thing, and because Schwarzwald is so silent nowadays that it's not awkward on her part. He leans forward, a smile playing at his lips, and it looks either mischievous or malicious, it's impossible to tell which. "No hard feelings about..." He loses the smile, looks almost like he's being serious as he gestures one purple-gloved finger at her head, "You know." He definitely doesn't care about whether she has hard feeling about it or not, and Schwarzwald knows this very well. She shrugs, looks away, and grunts an "Unimportant."

"Oh, don't be like that." He's not drunk, and neither is she. "Would it make you feel better if I said I was sorry?" He looks almost earnest, and she finally smiles, showing blackened teeth as she pulls off her helmet and stares at the Joker with her singular eye, smiling with her lips gone and her skin the tone of cooked hamburger meat and a few wisps of blond hair hanging raggedly off of her scalp.

"Do you think?" She rasps, with the very slightest hint of malice in her tone. He smiles still, shrugs, takes another drink of his nondescript liquor. She pulls the helmet back down over her head and sits in silence, as the Riddler comes back to the table and tells her that they're leaving. He snaps at her like a dog and says, "Schwarzwald, we're leaving." Crane is standing behind him, watching the helmeted Schwarzwald with apathy in his stare. She grunts, gives a nod, and stands, heading to the counter to pay for their tab before standing behind Riddler and Crane, silent. "Evening, Joker," Riddler states, flippantly, and walks to the door, as Crane follows him with a look of pure boredom etched into his features. He speaks under his breath with Nashton as they walk out the door, and Schwarzwald catches a few words, mainly a half of a sentence: "...will need to have my own workspace for development..." Apparently, Scarecrow and the Riddler have formed a partnership. Schwarzwald inwardly sighs at the stress this close proximity to Crane is going to cause, on top of the stress Edward causes on a regular basis, but shrugs it off. Stress is nothing new to her, and she'll just deal with it.

When Schwarzwald walks to the door after the two, she glances back into the Iceberg Lounge. Harley and Isley are laughing together, like old friends, and Joker is watching them. After a moment, he glances back at the door, sees Schwarzwald staring at him, and gives a slight wave, a mad 'I regret nothing' smile, and what is either a giggle or a clearing of his throat. She's become exactly what he knew she would turn into: a criminal, controlled and successful; one of the lunatics. Sure, there was...sacrifice, but hey, he sacrificed too, just like everyone else in this bar did at one point or another. Schwarzwald follows Riddler and Scarecrow out into the Gotham night, as a siren wails in the distance, as if the city were screaming at their arrival. She closes her eyes, though only one needs to be closed, and sighs into her helmet, before getting into and starting the nondescript black car, Crane and Nashton already sitting in back and continuing their conversation in hushed tones. The car rumbles to life and, after Riddler directs her to drive them back to the temporary base, she looks out the window at the city lights. She stares at the faraway lights, and inwardly, Schwarzwald wonders if the Batman is up there, watching them too. There's a slight tug on the rug, it almost feels like, because she knows that no matter where he is, where she is, he's always there and he's always going to be watching her. A moment later, she looks back ahead of her and drives away.

It doesn't slip past Schwarzwald that Joker never actually apologized.

* * *

**((Fin.))**


End file.
